


the earth is trembling on some new beginning

by kindclaws



Series: bingo, chopped, and prompts [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Co-leaders, F/M, Forehead Kisses, Grounder Clarke Griffin, Political Marriage, Season 1 Dropship Vibes, Sharing a Bed, Zombie Apocalypse, absolutely no one in this fic is genre-savvy, and better worldbuilding, enemies to married to awkward to friends to lovers, ie it's canonverse with zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-09-02 09:43:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20273884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindclaws/pseuds/kindclaws
Summary: Clarke shifts her weight and leans in and then her lips are on his. She'swarm,and he can taste the sweet aftershocks of wine on her breath. Bellamy makes a quiet sound of shock when she doesn't pull away. His hand flies up to cup her cheek as she sighs into his mouth, and then, only then, does she finally retreat - and only far enough to breathe a little and rest her forehead against his. Seconds pass, or a lifetime, and then she sits back, bringing her knees up to her chest like a barrier between them. Bellamy's mouth tingles a little and for an absurd moment he wonders if he's allergic to her."I think we'll be okay tomorrow," Clarke says faintly."What are you getting out of this?" Bellamy blurts out, and Clarke blinks as though knocked out of a daze. "You said you'd go find someone willing to marry me. It didn't have to be you. What do you want from this alliance?"She looks at him for a long time."Answers," she says simply.Well fuck,Bellamy thinks.I sure would like some too.





	1. i don't pay attention to the

**Author's Note:**

> **CONTENT WARNINGS:**  
\- For this fic, in general: lots of swearing, and all the warnings I presume are generally associated with zombie aus, ie death, undeath, violence, some body horror, some gore, the sort of medical care you get in the woods, and a little bit of people throwing up. Each chapter will have specific warnings as needed.  
\- For this chapter, specifically: some gore, minor death, and someone throws up but it's not described.
> 
> This fic is canon-divergent in the following ways:  
\- Clarke is not one of the delinquents  
\- because she's not with them, the delinquents take a few extra days to stop partying and travel to Mount Weather, and when they do, she's not there to save Jasper. Jasper is missing & presumed dead  
\- the Ark's oxygen-problem timeline last several months longer  
\- Raven and Monty have not made contact with the Ark  
\- the Commander is not Lexa. She's living with Costia somewhere  
\- there is no Flame  
\- if there's anything else I'm forgetting you'll figure it out
> 
> **PERMISSIONS:** Please do not download and save this fic locally. I make frequent revisions and don't like the idea of old versions being out there, and if I ever decide I hate it, I'll orphan it rather than delete it so you'll still be able to find and read it! I'm open to translations and podfics, but please contact me on tumblr first. Do not upload to other sites. Do not claim as your own.

The body in the chair stirs.

Bellamy watches through the window as Clarke stands and scans the room. After a moment she walks up to the glass in front of him. Her eyes stare right through him from the other side, unseeing, uncaring.

His breath, when he finally lets it out, fogs up the glass. Hers does not.

_ **six months ago ** _

"Strategically," Bellamy whispers, "You coming with me is not a smart move."

"Tough luck," Miller says, cracking his knuckles.

"If they kill me," Bellamy insists, "We need someone with a scrap of common sense to go back to camp and lead the delinquents, and we all know Finn has absolutely none. Monty's too young. Raven's a genius but she needs an instruction manual for any emotion more complicated than 'make thing go boom.'"

This gives Miller pause. At the other end of the bridge, dark figures in tattered armour seem to melt out of the shadows between the trees. They linger at the edge of the forest. There's no doubt in Bellamy's mind that they don't know they're here.

"I'm not exactly the poster child for heartfelt emotional support, either," Miller says.

"Oh fuck you, just go back," Bellamy snaps.

"Not convinced," Miller says. He nods towards the figure at the center, who clambers off her horse and starts making her way to the bridge's apex, flanked by two guards. The leader's hair shines red-gold in the day's weak lighting. "Maybe if I was a fifteen year old with a crush on you I'd be more inclined to listen. But there's three of them. I'm not letting you go alone."

"I take it back," Bellamy hisses. "You don't have common sense, after all."

"Don't make me shove you," Miller says. "It'll undermine your authority. Start walking, asshole."

Bellamy reluctantly starts moving forward. He keeps his head high and stares straight forward as they leave the shelter of the forest. Immediately he feels exposed and vulnerable, painfully aware of the cool air brushing the skin above his collar, where a single well-placed arrow could end everything. He resents the missing weight of the rifle he's grown used to having on his shoulder. He resolutely does not look from side to side, where he knows a handful of delinquents are hiding with the guns he hopes they don't have to use. Better not to give the Grounders any hints.

They're just children.

As he and Miller approach the center of the bridge, he feels the Grounder party measure him up like he measures them. The woman at the center is their leader, surely - there's a steely confidence underneath her posture and the warpaint smeared over the hollows of her eyes. One of her guards is a towering bearded warrior that Bellamy doubts he or Miller could take in hand-to-hand, and the second guard is - young, is his first thought. She can't be older than some of his eldest delinquents. Strands of braided blonde hair snake out from underneath her hood, stark and bright against the dark shades of her clothing, and her eyes are a startling shade of blue. She's staring at him and Miller with an intensity that makes him want to flinch. Instead, he holds himself taller.

"Your name is Bellomi?" the leader asks. _English_, he notes, still with a sense of wonder and disbelief. Part of him didn't believe Octavia and Finn, when they said they saw survivors of the apocalypse in the forest. But then - they know _something_ happened to Jasper.

"Yes," Bellamy says. He considers correcting her pronunciation of his name and then thinks better of it. "You?"

"Anya," the leader says. A moment passes in uncomfortable silence. Bellamy gets the impression Anya isn't particularly interested in this meeting going well.

"I - we didn't know there were survivors on Earth," Bellamy begins, unsure and trying not to show it. "We come from space."

Behind Anya, the girl with the bright blue eyes stiffens. When Bellamy's gaze flickers to her instead of Anya, she moves forward, blocking his view, a nonverbal suggestion to take his attention elsewhere.

"We know. We saw your ship," Anya says flatly. Her dark, ash-rimmed eyes unnerve Bellamy. "You're invaders."

"We are _not_," Bellamy says. "We didn't choose to come here, we were _sent_ \- "

"Are your people joining you?" Anya asks sharply. 

Bellamy bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste iron. He can hear dry leaves crunching as Miller uneasily shifts his weight, somewhere at his back. What to do? Until Monty and Raven manage to make contact, they have no idea what the Ark is planning - if they have a way to come down, if they even know the ground is habitable now. He can't promise Anya something he doesn't know, but he's tempted to lie, to hold the theoretical weight of the Guard's cudgel as a guarantee of safety. 

"I don't know," Bellamy says at last. "We... they exiled us." It's close enough to the truth. "Look - we're young, we're strong, we learn quickly. There must be some agreement we could reach - " Bellamy takes a step closer to Anya and as quick as a flash, the girl with blonde hair forces herself between them. Metal glints in the half-hearted sunlight and Bellamy feels a pinch of pain as the tip of a knife digs into his sternum and goes no further. The message is clear. He is not to come closer to Anya.

It takes Bellamy only a second to process that this is only a warning. He throws his arms up and yells at the top of his lungs: "Don't shoot!" His heart pounds as he waits for the following silence to be torn apart by his worried militia firing on the Grounders.

They don't. Bellamy breathes out a shaky sigh of relief, but the Grounders are already inching backwards, their faces wary.

"You should not be so loud in this forest, Bellomi of the Sky People," Anya hisses. The girl's grip on the knife she's holding to Bellamy's chest doesn't falter, but her lips flatten into a thin, unhappy line. "Sten daun, Wanheda," Anya snaps, and she backs away, sheathing her knife.

"Wait," Bellamy says as they start to retreat. "I don't understand, do we have an alliance?"

"I will not ally with such _loud_ people," Anya says. "You will not last long enough to learn better."

"Please," Bellamy says desperately, turning instead to the girl, who seems the most reluctant to leave, for all that she'd been willing to stab him a moment ago. "Please, they're just children."

She holds his gaze for what feels like an eternity before turning away. When Bellamy and Miller return to the edge of the forest where the other delinquents were hiding, Monroe passes him his rifle. Its weight on his back does not make him feel better.

They are nearly home, and the forest is eerily still - not completely silent, but the birdsong is faint and the muffled tread of their boots against the damp floor of rotting leaves has the hair on the back of Bellamy's neck standing on end. He starts to relax, marginally, as they crest a hill with windswept pines and they can hear voices now, carried by the wind over the half-completed wall around the dropship. He sees snatches of it between the trees - the faded blue jacket of a delinquent on watch, the shape of the dropship hunched over in its crater like a hibernating beast, surrounded by fluttering laundry hung up to dry in high branches.

_Home_, Bellamy thinks reflexively, and is surprised by how comfortable that word tastes in the back of his throat. He opens his mouth to say as much to Miller.

Then the Grounder materializes out of the underbrush out of nowhere, her arms held up, her palms bared to them. There are several rifles pointing at her before Bellamy has a chance to place the blonde braid that peeks out from underneath her hood.

"Put those guns down," the Grounder snaps at them, her voice imperious and unflinching, as though she's not the one faced with the wrong end. Bellamy had been about to tell his group the same thing, but her command sparks indignation in him.

"You don't give orders around here," he says coolly. "Your people refused to negotiate with us. Why did you follow us?"

"There's not much time," the Grounder says. Her clear blue eyes meet Bellamy's over the distance between him and something creeps down his spine. He would call it a chill if he still allowed himself to be frightened anymore but it has been a long time since he felt anything but a distant, numb guilt. "There's a horde nearby. If you don't shoot those guns, you might pass unnoticed. If you do, you definitely won't."

"Is that a threat?" Miller asks, his eyes narrowed over his scope.

"No," the Grounder snaps. She flounders for a moment, the set of her mouth uncertain, the first hint of hesitation they've seen. "I am trying to help," she says at last, sounding awkward. "My people - they shouldn't have turned away. Do you have others beyond your wall? Hunters, scavengers?"

"Don't answer that," Bellamy tells his group without taking his eyes off the Grounder.

"They're in danger," the Grounder says insistently, looking at him like he's stupid. "I am trying to _help_."

"No. No one else," Bellamy says. "Just us." _If the guards have done their job and no one's wandered off_, he doesn't add.

"Then we should gather everyone," the Grounder says. "And tell them to _be quiet_, for fuck's sake."

The Grounder looks at them expectantly, clearly waiting to return to the dropship camp with them, and no one moves until Bellamy snaps for everyone to lower their guns. He pats down the stranger himself, and as he removes various knives from cleverly concealed sheathes on her person he still kind of expects one to the throat. He's a little surprised when he straightens up, having confiscated the one by her ankle, and the Grounder still hasn't made a move. Up this close, he realizes her cheeks are a little pink. It doesn't make the colour of her eyes any brighter.

It doesn't.

"I want answers, inside," Bellamy tells her, and keeps a tight grip on her upper arm as they walk home. It's partially to keep track of her, and partially to keep the delinquents who rush over each other to see the stranger in their midst from losing their marbles. The Grounder keeps her chin up and defiant under the weight of every curious stare, and gives every impression of appearing unaffected.

She even stops in her tracks at a section of their makeshift wall abruptly enough that Bellamy half-stumbles until he puts his hand into a patch of leaking sap.

The Grounder reaches out before he can stop her, and easily digs her thumbnail into the wood.

"Pine," she says, sounding disgusted as she looks at him. "You made a wall out of _rotting pine?_ A determined _child_ could kick this down."

"The fuck do you want me to do about it?" Bellamy snaps. Her eyes stray to the ship.

"And everyone came down in that from space?" she murmurs as though he hadn't spoken. Something in her eyes is as awed as it is afraid before she blinks it away, cold and determined once more. "You should bring everyone inside. The wall won't hold."

"I'm likely to listen to you," Bellamy retorts, and tugs her by the arm into the dropship's yawning mouth.

Inside the lower compartment, Raven and Monty turn their heads as one. The way their eyes widen and their jaws drop at the sight of a stranger in such strange, tattered clothing would be funny, if Bellamy weren't also feeling like this whole day has been a kick to the solar plexus. He pushes the Grounder down into a nearby seat and buckles her into the harness before she can bat him away. Her hands trace the unfamiliar restraints curiously for a moment, tugging at the shoulder straps, before she settles them into her lap and gives him an unimpressed look.

"Is that... a Grounder?" Raven asks.

"Does she speak English?" Monty follows, inching closer to Miller.

"_Yes_," the Grounder says pointedly.

"So the meeting either went really well or really badly," Raven says. She leans against the workbench where she and Monty have left the desiccated remains of several wristbands scattered across the surface in a futile quest to both contact the Ark that cast them out, and distract Monty from his best friend's disappearance. Raven crosses her arms.

"I don't know what went wrong," Bellamy says, with a side glance at the Grounder. He mirrors Raven, crossing his arms as well, and notes the Grounder's eyes following the movement before they dart back up to his face. "Are you important, where you come from? Do you know why Anya left?"

"Wait, what's your name?" Monty asks, giving Bellamy a reproachful look.

The Grounder regards him for a moment, traces of a smile around her mouth.

"Clarke," she says. "My name is Clarke."

"How did you survive the apocalypse?" Raven asks, her head tilted, her frown singularly directed at Clarke as though she is a particularly frustrating puzzle.

"_I_ didn't," Clarke says pointedly, and Bellamy is reminded that she is not much older than most of the delinquents. "I - " she breaks off, frowning. "I don't know how the first ones survived. But there are a lot of us, now. The living were twelve clans when I was young. Now we are one. Mostly."

Her lips twitch into a private smile, as fleeting as it is confusing.

"There are others we can meet with, besides Anya?" Bellamy asks carefully.

"Yes," Clarke says with a sigh. "Anya is... cautious. She looked at you and saw only risks. But there are others."

"Why'd you follow us home?" Miller questions.

Clarke presses her lips into a thin, unhappy line.

"He said there were children," she says after a moment, jerking her chin at Bellamy. He looks away. And while everyone mulls that over and wonders what next to do, in the distance, the screams start.

In a second, Clarke's head jerks up. Bellamy's hands go for his gun, and Clarke reaches for him just as he steps out of reach.

"Put the gun down, you idiot, the _noise_," she says, sounding strangled. Her eyes are wide with fear, her hands shaking as they claw at the harness keeping her pinned down.

"If this was a trick," Bellamy snarls, "If you were a _distraction_, I will shoot you myself."

Outside the camp is in chaos. A cascade of gunshots splits the air, and Bellamy runs for the perpetrators - the kids currently overlooking the wall. Mbege stumbles past him, half-hunched over, and retches into the packed dirt.

"Get into the dropship," Bellamy says, harshly dragging the kid upright and shoving him in the right direction. He spares no time to see if he keeps going, just climbs up the nearest ladder and grabs the shoulder of the nearest sentry. There are shapes moving between the trees, their silhouettes dark and ragged. A body lies on the path outside the wall. Bellamy can't see the face from this angle, but the bright shirt tells him it's one of theirs. Blood pools in the sun-baked hollows of footsteps in dried mud.

"Who is that?" Bellamy asks.

"Atom, sir," Fox says in a trembling voice, and Bellamy's heart falls. Octavia likes him, and Bellamy knows this - this isn't going to be good. Fox's looking down at her gun like she can't quite believe she pulled the trigger. "We were - we were trying to keep them off the body. They - "

It's hard to hear her reed-thin voice over the crying and screaming in the camp around him. And then, as though summoned - Octavia is at his shoulder.

Her hand finds his instinctively, their fingers slotting together, before Octavia's wide eyes roam beyond the wall and fix upon Atom's limp body. She recognizes him faster and makes a wheezing sound in the back of her throat.

"Go back to the dropship," Bellamy says harshly, shoving her down.

"That's Atom - " Octavia cries out.

"I know, I'll deal with him - "

"You can't leave him to die - Just because I kissed him, Bellamy, please - "

"I'm _going_," Bellamy says, pushing Fox into Octavia's arms. "O, I need you to take charge. Round everyone up, get them inside, tell them to guard the door."

"Bell - "

He grabs her shoulders.

"Fear is a demon. _Say it_."

"Fear is a demon," Octavia breathes. Fox sobs into her clavicle.

Bellamy grabs his gun and pushes over the wall, landing with a heavy thump on the hard-packed ground on the other side. Pain sparks up one ankle like static, a distorted signal that makes him keen and stumble. The shapes in the trees creep closer, drawn by weakness, and Bellamy starts to think that his mother's mantra may have been more real than she knew. He can hardly hear the screaming now. The sound of his blood roaring in his ears drowns everything else out.

He pushes himself upright and forward, gritting his teeth through the sharp bite of pain in every other step.

Atom's body blinks when Bellamy stumbles to his knees at his side. It's a bit of a shock. There's enough blood staining the mud around them that Bellamy didn't think he'd be bringing Octavia anything more than a body.

"Can you walk?" Bellamy asks him. A stupid question, but his ankle is throbbing.

Atom opens his mouth and blood bubbles in the gap between his lips. His eyes are cloudy, unfocused, strange fluid leaking from them. His veins are stark against the paleness of his skin. He's breathing, somehow, but he looks like he already belongs in a grave.

Twigs snap, and Bellamy remembers they're not alone. Misshapen figures loom out of the forest, their faces cast into deep shadow. Bellamy sees empty gazes, something haunted dragged along unwilling by a puppeteer's cruel hands. He tastes rot when he breathes in and gags on it, doubling over like Mbege did to get a hold of himself before slinging the gun back over his shoulder and gathering Atom's body in his arms. He makes it several steps before his ankle gives out. The tattered figures loom closer now, their sickly-sweet smell inescapable, and Bellamy's vision is blurred by pain but he'll take a few of them out before he follows Atom in death. He shrugs the gun off his shoulder and raises it up, struggling to blink away dark spots on his vision, to aim the barell at the nearest enemy. He fires anyway, the sound a crack that splits the air in two, again and again, before he sees a blur of gold at his side.

It's the Grounder - Clarke - having figured out how a seatbelt works and lost her hood on her way to him. She jerks his gun down.

"For fuck's sake stop shooting, you'll bring more," she hisses, and then she's looping his arm over her shoulders and hauling him upright.

"Atom," Bellamy insists.

"Dead," Clarke says.

"Not yet."

"He's _dead_," Clarke says harshly as Bellamy slips out of her grasp and fists his hands in Atom's jacket.

"He's my people. I promised Octavia," Bellamy says, and at the look in his eyes Clarke huffs out a furious breath and joins him, dragging Atom through the camp's gates and towards safety. They leave a bloody trail in their wake, a long smear, and Bellamy keeps thinking it has to end, eventually, there can't be this much blood in a person.

"Like an arrow pointing straight to us," Clarke mutters angrily next to him, and Bellamy ignores her in favour of concentrating through the pain in his ankle.

Miller runs out to replace him when they're nearly to the dropship.

"Get inside, asshole," he snaps, pushing Bellamy back.

"Who are we missing?" Bellamy asks, casting a look over his camp. The cookfire is out of control, licking at the storage hut they built next to it, but there's no time to deal with it - the walls they were so proud of are shuddering under blows. There are bodies just inside the dropship's ramp, some moving feebly, a few not at all.

"Get inside," Clarke says, her hand tugging at his.

"What the hell was that?" Bellamy demands as he lets her pull him to safety. Next to them, Miller lets Atom's body slump next to the wall of the dropship and straightens up, his jaw tight, his eyes narrowed and suspicious. Bellamy, who has spent too much of the last few days struggling to contain the bravado of a camp full of hormonal teenagers, recognizes the signs that he's itching for a fight. It might be because he is, too.

"It's... it's Wanheda's curse," Clarke mumbles, her face turned away, the shadow of an old mistake darkening her gaze.

"Why are you dressed like them?" Miller demands, plucking with disgust at the sleeve of Clarke's ragged coat. "Are you working with them - the people that attacked us?"

"No," Clarke says, shaking her head vigorously, and her eyes are so wide and earnest, her face so nakedly displaying the desire to be believed, that Bellamy's tempted to think she's telling the truth. But there's a reason he's kept Miller close, all this time. He's observant and clever and he's made a valid point about the clothes. There has to be a reason all the Grounders they've seen are dressed like that - Bellamy can't believe anyone would do that by choice. 

"We need answers," he says to Clarke, struggling to keep his voice steady.

"After," Clarke says. She gestures broadly at the interior of the dropship. "You can seal this thing, right?"

"I got it," Raven says, scrambling for the door. She pulls the lever, and the dropship ramp climbs up agonizingly slow. He and Clarke watch its progress anxiously. Someone in the back of the compartment is crying - maybe one of the youngest, maybe Charlotte. Just before the ramp shuts them in, bloody hands scramble at the edges, reaching around, grasping.

Someone screams. Someone pulls a trigger in panic, and the bullet ricochets off the corner of the ramp. In the last of the light coming in from the edges, Raven screams and collapses, and then everyone is yelling as the gap closes and they are shut into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I've never written a zombie au before, and it's been surprisingly fun. Without the [Bellarke Bingo challenge.](https://bellarkebingo.tumblr.com/), I probably never would have. This fic is a combination of prompts from @marauders-groupie and @craniumhurricane, and a few I tossed in because I was feeling nostalgic for season 1.  
\- marriage agreement (marauders-groupie)  
\- zombie au (marauders-groupie)  
\- presumed dead (craniumhurricane)  
\- forehead kisses (craniumhurricane)  
\- strangers to lovers  
\- canon-divergent  
\- secret moment  
If anyone's curious, my bingo card is [here.](https://kindclaws.tumblr.com/post/186061991605/kindclaws-hello-thank-you-for-signing-up-for)
> 
> Fic title from [Hozier's Be.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJUh8z-QL8)


	2. world ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CONTENT WARNINGS:** some medical stuff, allusions to death and funeral rites

Footsteps. A quiet, drawn-out sigh. Bellamy opens his eyes to see Clarke's bloody hands at his eye level. His neck creaks in protest as he leans his head back to see her face. In his mind he can still see the eyes - cloudy and merciless, something valuable stolen from behind them - and he doesn't quite relax until he sees how tired, how terribly _present_ Clarke is. She's not one of the wraiths in the forest.

"How is she?" Bellamy asks hoarsely.

"Alive," Clarke says duly. "I took the bullet out, but I didn't really know what to do with the bone splinters." She hesitates. "We won't know if she has any feeling in her legs until she wakes up."

Bellamy sighs and clutches his gun closer to his chest. His fault. He should have trained the kids better. He should have come back to the dropship faster. He should have told Raven to close it anyway.

Clarke kneels in front of him. Her touch against his knee breaks the spiral of his mind.

"I need to check on your ankle," she says. _Oh_, he thinks. _Right_. The dull throb of pain has become background noise, like the fists pounding against the dropship door, like the kids crying softly in the back. Bellamy didn't believe Clarke at first, in the chaos after Raven was shot, when she said she's a healer and started yelling at Finn to make himself useful and bring her rags instead of having a breakdown. Now, as she cups the back of his calf and eases the boot off his swollen foot, her voice measured and designed to calm as she tests his range of motion - now he believes it.

"What's the verdict, doctor?" Bellamy acts as she loosens the laces on his boot and gingerly slips is back on. The gentle pressure makes him hiss at first but it feels good a moment later, like a comforting grip.

"You'll be fine in a few days," Clarke says. "Stay off of it."

"I don't know if I can afford to," Bellamy mutters. He laughs humourlessly. "Got a camp to rebuild and innocent kids to bury."

It's been an hour since the attack, at least, and there are still chilling sounds from outside, low howls and scratching at the seams of the dropship door, as though the Grounders on the other side have brought feral dogs with them. 

Clarke looks over her shoulder at the neat row of bodies arranged by the wall. Atom isn't the only one who didn't survive the night. Someone found a tarp inside the dropship that hadn't yet been appropriated into a tent and has covered them, thank goodness, but the shapes underneath the bright orange plastic are still unnerving.

They didn't have bodies, on the Ark. They had living people inside, and they had floated people outside. Maybe there was a split second before they become space debris but after they died, but it hardly matters now.

"Don't bury them," Clarke says. "On the ground, we burn the dead."

_I don't think so_, Bellamy thinks, anger his knee-jerk reaction. _We didn't dream of the ground for so long just to get here and go up in smoke._ Octavia was the first of them to set foot on the ground, and the first boy she ever kissed will be the first to rest under it. It's almost poetic, if you can ignore her red-rimmed eyes.

He doesn't say this out loud. He says, "Sure. Whatever you want." And Clarke just rocks back on her heels and keeps staring at the outline of the bodies.

The members of Bellamy's unofficial council take the opportunity to gather close now that Raven's no longer in immediate danger.

"What's out there?" Finn demands.

"The dead," Clarke says dully.

"Dead people don't moan and bang on walls," Bellamy says impatiently.

"They do now," Clarke says.

"Earth is _fucked up_," Miller whispers.

"We tried to reach Mount Weather," Monty says. His voice is quiet, but everyone immediately falls silent and strains to listen. Clarke is very, very still. "On our second day on Earth. The Ark told us there'd be shelter and supplies there. But my friend..." Monty's voice cracks with pain. His hands shake as he looks at Clarke. "I didn't see what happened. We were attacked and everyone scattered. Is that what happened to my best friend?"

"Yes," Clarke whispers. She bows her head. "I'm sorry."

Monty nods jerkily and goes to the very back of the dropship, snagging an empty hammock and curling up very small.

Bellamy doesn't think he can get any sleep with the tortured sounds and the fists banging and clawing at the dropship walls. He remembers sitting up against a wall, his rifle in hand, alternating between watching the door and watching Clarke. Neither of them look prepared to close their eyes until the danger passes, but next thing he knows, a hand is shaking his shoulder and Bellamy blinks awake. A blonde braid swings in his vision.

"It's over," Clarke says softly. "They went quiet about an hour ago."

Still, they lower the dropship door carefully, and with a great deal of suspicion. Bellamy and his militia are the first out, sweeping the early morning with their rifles at the ready. The camp has been torn apart - there are claw marks in the carefully-built walls, bloody footsteps all over the tarps that have been trampled into the dirt. All the meat they were smoking is strewn about the ground, half-eaten and spat out. There was dew last night, and the morning is still new and cool enough that it lingers now as a wispy fog over the camp. Bellamy's ears still ring with the half-remembered sounds of hands scrambling at solid metal. The dropship camp feels eerie and hostile for the first time, no longer safe, no longer wholly theirs even though there's no sign of the dead that Clarke claims exist.

She stands at his side now, her knife held loosely in one hand. He wonders if this is some kind of cruel joke, if the Grounders are sadistic enough to send an army to moan outside their door and one warrior with a soft voice to herd them inside and watch them start to crack. Clarke's eyes are pained and distant as she takes in the camp's destruction. Bellamy looks away.

"As much as I love Anya," Clarke says, "She is not a welcoming person. If you want alliances, you need to go to Polis."

"Polis?" Bellamy asks with a frown. _Greek for city, or people_. Surely she can't mean...

"Our city," she says. "And the home of our Commander. He's your best chance at survival."

"Thank you," Bellamy says, and is shocked to find that he means it.

"This place is trashed," Finn says loudly as he steps over the remains of a tent. "We should take shelter in Mount Weather."

"No," Clarke says, in a tone that leaves no room for discussion.

"Do I need to remind you what happened last time we tried to reach it?" Monty says, his voice unexpectedly harsh.

"Clarke," Bellamy asks, quietly stepping closer to her so his voice won't carry. His ankle still throbs when he puts weight on it but it's better than it was, at least. "What... what exactly is wrong with Mount Weather? Why can't we get close?"

Clarke's gaze meets his and slides sideways as if in shame.

"Not there," she says, and that's all he can get out of her.

"Did you ever see the Titanic?" Miller asks.

Bellamy tears his eyes away from Polis' marketplace with great difficulty. There are so many _people_, many of them dressed in the tatters of that peculiar Grounder fashion, and they're selling things he still has trouble wrapping his head around. There's a vendor over to Bellamy's left that is rotating small chunks of meat on skewers over a small fire and they smell _delicious_. Bellamy's hunting parties have brought home boars and some extraordinarily stupid fowl, but nothing that smelled like this. He thinks they have _spices_. And over there someone selling small carved totems, and over there, a young girl with a knife longer than her arm lopes the top off a fruit and hands it out to a buyer.

Miller tugs insistently on Bellamy's sleeve.

"Hmm?" Bellamy says noncommittally. He knows he shouldn't let his guard down so much, especially since the Grounders have been nothing but _weird_ since his delinquent party showed up at Polis' outer gates, and their guide to the tower is glaring at his slow pace over her shoulder, but it's hard to uproot his feet and move past the marketplace he wants to experience together. It's just that he could never have imagined this existed on Earth, not after the apocalypse, not in the wildest bedtime stories he told Octavia.

"Dude," Miller insists. "Titanic?"

"What about it?"

"The movie. It's about a huge ship sailing across the ocean, supposedly based on a true story."

"Never seen it," Bellamy says, trying not to let his irritation creep into his voice. "Must have been an Alpha station exclusive luxury."

Miller gets a hard look in his eyes when he's reminded of their origins, but he pushes ahead anyway.

"It's not about the movie, anyway, it wasn't very good - look, it was supposed to be an unsinkable ship. It had all these compartments in its belly, so if something went wrong in one of the ship's sections, they could contain it and the rest of the ship could keep sailing. It didn't work, but - "

Miller momentarily falls quiet as their guide pauses to wait for them to catch up and they come to close. Monroe, who was apparently eavesdropping, nudges him. They have to keep their voices low because even in the midst of the marketplace everyone is weirdly quiet, their conversations low and muted.

"The ship sunk?" she asks.

Miller says nothing until their guide turns and keeps walking. The tower she's leading them to looms up ahead, a vestige of a former civilization. It looks ominous with all the glass long-since blown out of its windows, leaving only cavities for the wind to whistle through. There's only one more gate to pass before they're finally there, and Bellamy will meet the Commander everyone whispers about.

"The ship sunk," Miller says quietly. "But that's not the point. The point was the compartments. The people who made the Titanic were trying to stop the spread of water. What's Polis trying to stop the spread of?"

In a flash of insight, Bellamy suddenly understands what he means. A soft touch of dread trails down his spine. Up ahead is the last gate that divides the marketplace district from the tower district. It's the fourth they've passed through, counting the very first that led them into Polis, and each gate has been the lone path through various walls dividing the city like scars, walls built over the years from whatever the Grounders could get their hands on, a patchwork of metal fencing, wood and clay bricks. Guards armed with wicked sharp weapons stand at attention at each gate, and they don't lounge like the guards on the Ark used to, the ones that didn't have something to prove like Bellamy did. Their guide leads them to the line of people waiting to pass between the marketplace district to the tower, and Bellamy watches the procedure at the gate.

Every single person approaches a guard, one by one, and presents their face, brushing their hair back from their eyes or removing those bone-encrusted masks that Grounders seem so bizarrely fond of. The guards tilt their faces back to the sunlight and scrutinize each face closely.

At first, Bellamy thought they were looking for criminals. Now he thinks of the detached, impersonal way they check every person - even the children - and wonders what they're missing.

"You're right," Bellamy quietly tells Miller. "Something's weird here."

He kicks himself for being distracted by the sights and smells of the city, for the possibilities it opened to his mind, instead of paying attention to possible threats to his people. The queue moves up fairly quickly as most people are only examined for a few seconds, and Bellamy finds himself nudged forward by their scowling guide. He grudgingly lets the gate guard lean in close, staring him in the eyes.

Seconds pass.

The guard says something quietly in that weird Grounder slang, and another comes up and shoulders him aside. The hairs on the back of Bellamy's neck stand up and his hands itch for the rifles they were forced to leave at the city's outskirts as two guards examine his face together. The atmosphere around the gate has gone even quieter than the already muted city.

Then the second guard shrugs and waves Bellamy on. The spell is broken and the uneasy silence breaks into something more natural.

Bellamy starts breathing again only on the other side of the gate.

"I thought you were going to get murdered," Monroe tells him all in a rush as she joins him on the other side, and he squeezes her shoulder to tell her to be more careful with her voice. She looks around furtively as Miller and Mbege pass through the gate.

"We do not keep the Commander waiting," their guide says stiffly, as though it's their fault they had to pass through unnecessarily mysterious Grounder security. The tattoos on her chin stretch with the unhappy set of her mouth. Bellamy thinks the artist should have accounted for their canvas' insistence on sneering.

"Then lead on," Bellamy says pointedly, and she frowns at him a little more before turning and bringing them to the lift in the base of the tower. Bellamy and his group are kept away from the edges of the platform as it is painstakingly raised far above the city's skyline. He wonders why they don't just use stairs, and then thinks to himself that if all goes well on this trip and they have a reason to come back, he'll have to bring Raven and let her have a field day with the mechanism.

The doors at the top of the tower open up and Bellamy is marched into the throne room alongside his delinquents. His first thought is _oh, Clarke's here_, when he sees her blonde head, glowing like a firebrand in the sunlight. She turns to face them and gives Bellamy the ghost of a smile before his gaze moves to the figure seated next to her on a wooden throne.

The Commander stands and walks forwards, the guards wordlessly parting to make room. He reaches out a hand to Bellamy and smiles.

Bellamy hesitates only a moment before shaking it.

"Welcome to Polis, Bellomi," the Commander says. "Or, should I say first, welcome to the ground?"

The Commander's face is warm and kind, unmarked by scars or tattoos, in stark contrast to his scowling guards. Bellamy's eyes skim his dark skin and clever eyes and feels questions rising up in the back of his throat. The Commander looks _familiar_, and that's not right. Neither is his apparent lack of hostility. None of this makes sense.

"How do you know my name?" Bellamy asks.

"Clarke has told me a little about your camp. I'm hoping you will tell me a little more," the Commander says. Bellamy's eyes meet Clarke's over his shoulder. Right. That was a stupid question. His eyes linger on her though paying more attention to the Commander would be the smart choice. Clarke looks... cleaner and lighter here than she did out in the forest. Her shoulders more relaxed, her chin held higher. "Come. Let's talk."

In the next room there is a beautiful hand-drawn map spread out over a table, its corners weighed down with small riverstones. Bellamy's eyes find strange villages and landmarks labeled in neat script before Clarke leans over and points to a stretch of empty forest.

"That's where your people landed," she says.

Once he has a reference it's easy for Bellamy to trace the path their scouting trip must have taken to get supplies from My Weather in those first few days. His eyes find a small skull drawn over the bunker they never made it to. It's difficult to tear his eyes away, even as the Commander begins to point out the territories of various clans in a soft, patient voice.

Finally they return their attention to the region around Mount Weather where no villages lay. The Commander grows distant as he traces a wide boundary around it with the tip of his finger.

"This is no one's territory. It's not open for settlement." The Commander's finger pauses on the dropship's location, right on the edge of Mount Weather's wide boundary. He exhales heavily. "Clarke tells me you have a mostly intact ship. It's safe, easily defensible. Not ideal land for Triku, so they would probably be willing to negotiate a trade. But you will have a hard time expanding past the ship. You will face frequent attacks. Your people will be in danger every time they stray to hunt or forage."

"What's out there?" Bellamy demands. "What are your people so afraid of?"

"Death," the Commander says plainly, and Clarke looks down at her feet. Bellamy doesn't understand, and if the looks he's getting from Miller and Monroe are any indication, they're also scratching their heads at the Grounders' inexplicable, almost occult fascination with death.

_"Dead people don't moan and bang on walls."_  
_"They do now."_

It must be some rival Grounder group, beyond the Commander's control. Strong enough to defy him, surely, because of the resources of Mount Weather.

"There are other options," Clarke says. "One is for your people to split up and disperse across the clans. To be absorbed into new families."

Bellamy remembers the way the delinquents look up to him already, like he's the only person they trust to put their lives first anymore, and his stomach twists with uneasiness at the thought of dividing them up and sending them off to strange places like they're only pawns to be passed around. It feels like something the Ark would do.

"No," he says aloud, and next to him, Monroe breathes out a sigh of relief.

"It's not so bad," Clarke says gently. "Wells and I adapted quickly," she says as she lays a hand on the Commander's shoulder and smiles sadly at him. _Wells_. The name stirs something half-forgotten in the back of Bellamy's mind. It's only a flicker. The memory slips out of reach as soon as he reaches for it.

"No," Bellamy says again. It wouldn't be fair to the delinquents. They're the only family most of them have, now.

"That's fine," the Commander - _Wells?_ \- says so casually that Bellamy almost believes it won't be a problem again. "If you want to stay together, we'll find a solution. Only..." the Commander absentmindedly taps his finger against a blank patch of the map near the coast, marked only by hazy sketches of forest. He turns his head and speaks only to Clarke, not so quietly that Bellamy can't hear, but clearly not meant for them. "It's too late in the year for them to settle, isn't it?"

"Not impossible, but it'd be difficult to do before the winter," Clarke says with a wince. "And Wells - they're completely clueless."

"We're not," Miller says.

"Mostly clueless," Clarke amends generously, and they don't dispute that.

"Could they survive in their ship until the spring?" Wells asks.

"We can," Bellamy interrupts, his skin prickling with irritation at being discussed as though he is not standing right here. The worst part of it is that Wells does not even seem particularly aware that he is ignoring Bellamy - it's like being on the Ark again. Not even from Alpha was cruel, but they were certainly... arrogant, even when they didn't mean to be.

Clarke and Wells glance at him now with some doubt. Bellamy tries not to grit his teeth too visibly.

"Not by yourself," Clarke says. "You will need to ally yourself with at least one of the clans until your people learn how to survive the ground. The problem is..."

"Your best chance of forming a solid alliance that is respected by the other clans is through a marriage," Wells finishes.

"You're kidding," Monroe says.

"It's 2149, man," Miller says. "Come on. That's a little antiquated."

"It's mostly symbolic," Wells says quietly. "Unless you have something better to offer. A skill to trade, or supplies?"

"The Ark didn't send us down with much," Bellamy says darkly. "They were counting on us being able to reach Mount Weather." One of the guards at the edges of the room shifts in discomfort at the mention, and Bellamy's eyes stray to the wicked curved sword at the man's hips. Of course. The one thing they have at the dropship that he hasn't seen even a hint of in Polis. "Guns," he blurts out. It's not ideal, giving up their biggest advantage over these warriors, but -

Then he notices the way both Clarke and Wells have recoiled, the glint of panic in Clarke's eyes.

"No one will accept those. And you will have to be taught to live quietly, like we do."

"What's wrong with guns?"

"They're loud," Clarke says. "The dead are attracted by noise."

At Bellamy's side, Miller discretely slaps his face and leaves his palm there for a long moment. Bellamy, frankly, would like to do the same. The Grounders' strange obsession with death is getting on his nerves. He'd like Clarke a lot more if she started giving them straight answers instead of cryptic warnings with no context.

"Fine," Bellamy snaps. "No guns. I'll marry whoever you want me to."

"Fine," Clarke says coolly, raising her chin at his sharp tone. "I will speak with the clans and find someone willing."

"Are you sure?" Monroe hisses at him.

"Who else?" Bellamy says tightly. "Everyone else in our camp is under eighteen."

"Raven," Miller murmurs.

"Yeah, I'd like to see you go home and tell Raven we married her off," Bellamy says. He rubs at his jaw. "It has to be me. I can't ask any of the delinquents to do this."

The weight of it doesn't really sink in until Wells' guards have shown Bellamy and his party to a set of rooms to rest.

Marriage.

Fuck. Bellamy doesn't even know what that looks like. Aurora never told him and Octavia anything about their fathers, but Bellamy has a hard time imagining his mother happily committed to anyone even if they hadn't been living with the laws and constraints of the Ark. She was a very solitary creature, after all, and after Octavia was born Bellamy grew to consider himself one, too. What future could he have expected, when someone getting too close would risk Octavia's safety? He's never let himself imagine a relationship - let alone an entire _marriage_ \- for himself.

_It doesn't matter_, Bellamy decides, as night falls over Polis. _Things are different on the ground_. Octavia is safe now, safe to be her own person and thoroughly ignore Bellamy if that's what she wants. And this marriage - it doesn't have to mean anything. Clarke will find someone who understands it's just political, and everyone at the dropship will be really awkward and nosy about it for a while, and that will be that.

Except that in the morning, Clarke volunteers herself to be his wife, and Bellamy can't quite ignore the lurch in his stomach as her steel-bright eyes find his and stare into his soul. She raises her eyebrows ever so slightly in a challenge, and Bellamy waits a few beats before nodding his acceptance. His throat suddenly feels so dry that he does not trust his voice. He lets Miller and Wells hash out the last of the agreement.

The delinquents already know her, at least. Maybe that will help.

The Grounders move quickly, after it's decided. By noon Wells says they've sent riders out to each of the clans, including the dropship. Bellamy sends Mbege with him so his over-eager militia doesn't shoot the messenger, and then spends the rest of the day fretting about Octavia's reaction.

Clarke finds him in the afternoon with a faded bottle in her hand. She and Miller stare each other down for a moment until Bellamy throws a clump of candlewax between them. In the absence of anything to take his mind off the absurdity of this whole situation, he's been peeling chunks of it off the furniture in the rooms Wells gave them. Polis, it seems, has an abundance of candles.

"Can we talk?" Clarke asks.

"Talk," Bellamy says.

"Privately," Clarke says pointedly.

Bellamy would like to continue being difficult. But he follows her - alone - out of the room and up a winding staircase that opens up onto the roof of the tower. He tells himself it's because he's hoping Clarke will start answering some of his increasing number of questions about Earth, and it is. Mostly.

She sits on the ridge at the very edge of the tower without hesitation, even though it's windy up here without any shelter from the open sky, and her loose hair whips violently behind her. Bellamy does not want to get so close to that lengthy drop off the side of the tower, but Clarke is already nonchalantly prying the cork out of the bottle she's carrying.

So he sits next to her and accepts a sip from the bottle after he makes sure she takes one first. The flavor blooms across his tongue, so sweet and unexpected he nearly drops the bottle into the void. He makes a quiet, delighted sound in the back of his throat and wipes the back of his hand at the drops that leak from the corner of his mouth. His hand comes away with burgundy streaks across it. Too purple to be blood, but near enough that his heart still skips a beat.

"It's good, isn't it? A pre-wedding gift from the Shallow Valley clan. They have the sweetest berries," Clarke says as she takes the bottle back.

"Is this a pre-wedding tradition, too?" Bellamy asks, though he doesn't really think it is. Clarke looks contemplative. "Sneaking away to drink wine in tall places in secret?"

"Not that I know of."

"Well, it can't be a tradition if it's not passed down," Bellamy says. He looks out over the expanse of Polis laid out beneath them and from this angle it's even easier to see the divisions Miller spoke of. The compartments, ready to seal off sections of the city at a moment's notice. He closes his eyes against the sensation of vertigo and thinks of the forest around the dropship, instead. It'll be nice to go home to that, after all this business.

_Home_. How quickly it became more natural than the apartment he grew up in on the Ark.

"It keeps hitting me," Bellamy says, when it doesn't seem like Clarke wants to talk yet. "How amazing it is that this is down here. The Earth is survivable, and up there we never knew."

"They had to suspect," Clarke says. "If they sent a hundred of you down."

"98," Bellamy corrects. "Raven and I weren't planned additions." And he think of those they've lost already - the kid with the goggles who disappeared on the trip to Mount Weather, the handful of others who snuck off in pairs for more privacy and never returned to camp. Bellamy's delinquents are dwindling quickly, for all that they've only been on the ground for a week. He grudgingly admits to himself that if this Grounder alliance works out, it'll be nice to have some help. Just as long as the Grounders don't use them like the Ark did. He squints up at the sky but of course it's too bright to see the dot of their former prison crossing the sky. "They hoped we'd live, so that they could, but if not, we were expendable."

"They're children," Clarke says as he takes another swig of the sweet wine.

"That's the Ark," Bellamy says. "Can I expect better down here?"

"I don't know," Clarke says quietly.

Neither of them speak for a while as they pass the bottle back and forth and watch the distant movement in the city below them. _A city_, Bellamy marvels to himself, still feeling a thrill. _An entire city._ For a fleeting moment he imagines a universe in which Aurora Blake is not dead. One in which she came down with them in the dropship and Bellamy could bring her here, to the marketplace that sounds so much like those in the empires of her stories, and see her face as she tasted the wine.

But it's gone a moment later, replaced by a newfound bitterness when he remembers that Jaha and his ilk floated her.

He pushes that away. The Ark is gone. The ground is their future.

"What should I expect?" Bellamy says. "Are there wedding vows I should memorize? Should I be giving your family gifts?"

"I have no more family," Clarke says, though it must be a distant hurt, because her voice doesn't waver. "Just my mentor, Anya, and Wells. As for the wedding..." Clarke props her leg up on the ridge and twists around to face Bellamy more directly. She raises her chin like she's going to war. "We will be expected to kiss, of course. And I'd rather not do it for the first time in front of a crowd of people." Her confidence falters slightly. "...Do you?"

Oh. _Oh._

"That's probably a good idea," Bellamy hears himself say. "We wouldn't want to lean in and... misjudge the size of the other person's nose."

Clarke snorts and it breaks the surface of the tension. Bellamy grins at her as she hides her smile behind a hand, and it's easier to breathe now, some of the awkwardness bleeding out.

"Glad we're on the same page."

"Do you want to do it now?" he asks.

"That would be practical," Clarke says, steeling her face as though she's preparing for battle. He watched the line of her throat tremble as she swallows.

"Okay," he says. He shuffles a little closer. "Um."

Clarke shifts her weight and leans in and then her lips are on his. She's - she's _warm_, and he can taste the sweet aftershocks of wine on her breath. Bellamy makes a quiet sound of shock when she doesn't pull away. They kiss for long enough that it'd certainly satisfying the audience of a wedding and Clarke only leans closer, her palm resting on his knee. Bellamy's hand flies up to cup her cheek as she sighs into his mouth, and then, only then, does she finally retreat - and only far enough to breathe a little and rest her forehead against his.

Seconds pass, or a lifetime, and then she sits back, bringing her knees up to her chest like a barrier between them. Bellamy's mouth tingles a little and for an absurd moment he wonders if he's allergic to her.

No. That's stupid.

"I think we'll be okay tomorrow," Clarke says faintly. Bellamy hums in agreement. He traces the edges of her face by sight and his gaze still keeps returning to her eyes, like magnetism. _Oh, fuck._ That's his future wife. They're getting _married_ tomorrow.

"What are you getting out of this?" Bellamy blurts out, and Clarke blinks as though knocked out of a daze. "You said you'd go find someone willing. It didn't have to be you. What do you want from this alliance?"

She looks at him for a long time.

"Answers," she says simply.

_Well fuck_, Bellamy thinks. _I sure would like some too._

"To what?" he presses.

"We'll have time to talk later," Clarke says, and then she picks up the empty bottle of wine and leaves him sitting there.

It was the best kiss of his entire life, but he's not going to tell her that.

The morning before the wedding passes Bellamy by in a blur. The faintest trace of the sickly-sweet taste of that wine still lingers in his mouth as the Grounders dress him in clothes that are slightly cleaner and slightly less studded than their usual wardrobe, but Bellamy draws the line at the jacket they try to make him wear. Over the simple linen shirt they give him he puts back on the guard jacket he wore to the ground. The Ark's emblem burns a hole into his back on the walk to the throne room, and it's...

It's not as though Bellamy has much love left for the Ark or its Guard. But he had his place in it, temporary as it was, because of his mother, and the jacket is the last tenuous thing he has of her. The only way to include her in this rite.

Also, he likes to be difficult.

Then he's in front of the doors to the throne room, and Clarke is coming down from the other end of the hall, led by Anya, and Bellamy is struck by the violent urge to run from this absurdity. Clarke is wearing a faded, pale blue dress and someone has taken the time to weave tiny wildflowers into her braids. When she comes close enough that he can see her eyes underneath a dark layer of smeared warpaint, it becomes difficult for Bellamy to notice any other details.

They pause in front of the doors and Clarke holds his gaze.

"Last chance to run away," Bellamy says, striving for a light tone. Anya glares at him anyway.

"You don't scare me," Clarke says, jutting her chin out. Bellamy wishes he could say the same. His mind replays the memory of her lips on his, the touch of her jaw under his fingertips, and his chest feels tight. _Fear is a demon_, his mother's voice says, distant and mocking and long-dead.

He exhales, and Clarke is still staring resolutely at him when the doors to the throne room open. Bellamy walks forward as if pulled by strings. Wells sits in his wooden throne, a tattered bolt of red cloth held in both hands. Bellamy looks straight ahead at him, at that flash of red like the banners waved in gladiatorial fights, instead of the scarred and unfamiliar faces peering at him. Strangers whisper _Skaikru_ as he walks by.

At the end of the room Anya's hands dig into his shoulders and force him to kneel. His knees dig painfully into the floor as Clarke kneels across from him. They face each other as Wells comes to stand between them, holding a bowl of... _slime_. Clarke sticks her hand in without hesitation, letting the thick, oily substance envelop her up to the wrist. Bellamy follows suit and tries not to grimace at the residue it leaves on his hand, like the trail left behind by a slug. Clarke holds her coated hand out - a challenge - so Bellamy grabs on. She squeezes tightly as Wells ties an end of the red bolt to each of their wrists, binding them together.

And then he speaks in that calm, sure voice, loud enough to carry to the back of the crowded room. The candles burning nearby fill Bellamy's nose with smoke and sting his eyes. But Clarke is staring at him with a composure born of steel, and Bellamy forces himself to meet her halfway as Wells reads the terms of their alliance. He pauses for them to agree at various points, and Clarke's voice is quiet but unshakable as she promises to abide by the alliance on behalf of her people. At last Wells reaches the end of the terms they agreed upon, and Bellamy thinks perhaps this is what a wedding is, to the Grounders. Perhaps that's all. Politics and slime.

Then Clarke untangles their fingers and holds her palm out next to his, their hands forming a makeshift bowl.

"Whatever you do, don't flinch," Clarke says urgently, low and private, just for him, and Bellamy only has time to frown at her before Wells strikes a match and drops it into the curve of their joined hands.

Clarke's warning is the only thing that stops Bellamy from instinctively jerking his hand back. There wouldn't be anywhere to go, anyway, with the red cloth tieing them together, but the sight and heat of fire blooming in his palm is enough to make Bellamy tense. He waits for the pain of a burn to bloom, and it never does. Though he can feel the heat of the flame, it's dulled by the slime they dipped their hands into. The coating is burning instead of their skin, the match slowly consuming itself in their grasp.

"Do you, Clarke Griffin, promise to uphold this alliance and to defend your partner's people as if they were your own, until your last living breath?"

"I do," Clarke swears, loud enough to carry to the far corners of the room. Her hand twitches against Bellamy's. If it weren't for the tightening around her eyes, he might think she's completely unaffected by the fire burning in their joined hands. The heat is starting to grow more uncomfortable as the slime burns away. Soon it will be just their bare skin against the touch of the lit match, and Wells is making no move to untie them.

"Do you, Bellamy Blake, promise to uphold this alliance and learn from your partner's people, as if they were your own, until your last living breath?"

"I do," Bellamy says with a gasp as the last of the protective film of slime is consumed and the match singes his calluses. Clarke's eyes nearly flicker shut with pain before she forces them open again to stare at Bellamy with an intensity that makes him silently grit his teeth and bear the sharp bite of pain as Wells blows the match out.

"Then as Commander of the living, I declare you husband and wife."

The heat of it lingers, almost unbearable, until their wrists are untied and Wells lets their hands drop. Clarke discreetly flexes her hand at her side but does not pay any further attention to the tiny burn on her palm, so Bellamy follows suit as they stand even as every instinct tells him to check his matching burn. He doesn't hear Wells tell them to kiss over the rush of blood in his ears, but Clarke looks at him expectantly, only a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes, and Bellamy leans in. It's both easier and harder to kiss her after their moment on the tower's roof. Easier, because the kiss now doesn't feel quite as stolen and terrifying. Harder, because her lips are firm and unyielding against his, no hint of a smile or of softness, and it leaves him feeling off-kilter when he pulls away, wondering if they looked stiff and wooden to anyone else watching.

_Husband and wife_, Bellamy thinks, distantly. Wildly. Even with Clarke standing right next to him, even with the words of agreement having barely left his mouth, it still feels like an absurd dream.

And that's before the Grounders start to stomp their feet and the butts of their spears against the floor. They quickly fall into a steady beat that reverberates throughout the throne room, into every corner and rattling Bellamy's bones. It sounds almost like a heartbeat - each stomp coming with an echo, a moment's pause between the pairs. The Grounders begin to chant, and Bellamy's ears strain to pick up what they're saying as the low murmurs grow deafening.

_Wanheda. Wanheda. Wanheda._

"What does that mean?" Bellamy hisses, before darting a look at Clarke.

He doesn't expect her to be frozen in place, her eyes wide with shock and terror. Bellamy grabs her hand without thinking.

"We're done here," he tells Wells lowly. "She needs - where's a quiet room?"

Next to him, Clarke sucks in a shuddering breath. Wells takes one look at her face and presses his lips into a thin line.

"Through that door," he says, nodding to the side. "I'll cover for you, but you'll need to come back for congratulations."

He'll deal with the political schmoozing later. Clarke is clutching at his fingers like a lifeline, and after the meeting up on the roof, Bellamy thinks they might be friends. He doesn't keep his friends in bad situations. He pulls her out of the throne room to the sound of cheering and then all the noise is muffled as the door shuts behind them. He locks it in case anyone has any ideas on barging in on the newlyweds.

"I'm sorry," Clarke says. "I'll pull myself together, I promise, I just need a moment - "

"You don't have to," Bellamy says lowly, looking around. They're in a bedroom, a simple one considering its proximity to the throne room. He glances back over his shoulder at the locked door, traces his gaze over the frame, the hinges that seem to be holding steady through the rust. He looks back at her, meeting her eyes, trying to put into their shared gaze what he doesn't yet have words for. "It's just us," he says. "You're safe. And uh, we're... we're married now, so I guess we'd better get used to seeing the best and worst of each other," he finishes lamely.

Clarke gives a watery half-laugh.

"I..." she says, her eyes darting to the side as she struggles to compose herself.

"You're okay," Bellamy promises. "I got you."

She sits heavily on the side of the bed like a puppet with all the strings suddenly cut, her head bowed. Bellamy approaches cautiously before kneeling in front of her to see her face.

"Does it mean something? The thing they were chanting?"

"It's me," she says, screwing her eyes tightly shut. "It's - it means the Commander of Death."

"I thought Wells was the Commander?"

"Of the living," Clarke says, an old wound seeping bitterness into her voice until she swallows it down again, shaking her head roughly and taking slow, deep breaths.

"You don't have to tell me," Bellamy says, though the part of him that worries for the delinquents wants to demand answers. They're married, yes, but there's no love between them. This is a political alliance. They promised to help each other. Bellamy would like that help to come, in this moment, in the form of explanations that aren't cryptic as fuck.

"I..." Clarke says. "I was born in space."

Bellamy sits back on his heels, rocking away from her in shock. That's... not what he was expecting. She's from the Ark?

"My father... I don't know why, but when we were eight years old, my father took Wells and I down to Earth in an escape pod. Like you, he expected to find supplies and shelter in Mount Weather."

"Wells was born on the Ark too?" Bellamy asks in shock.

"Yes," Clarke says, waving her hand dismissively. "His dad was Thelonious Jaha, our dads worked in engineering together and we were best friends. I don't know why my dad took him that day too, but he did."

A chill creeps down Bellamy's spine. _Oh. Oh no._ He held a gun to Thelonious Jaha and pulled the trigger for the chance to follow his sister to Earth. And now he just made a peace deal with the son of the man he might have murdered. _They can't know_, Bellamy thinks wildly. Clarke and Wells both need to be kept in the dark, at least until they know how to survive on the ground without their help. Bellamy can't risk the safety of the delinquents because of his mistakes. The Grounders could turn against them.

Clarke takes a ragged breath, completely oblivious to Bellamy's turmoil. Her gaze is years away.

"Dad was shocked to find people living there... but not as shocked as they were to see someone surviving on the ground. The people of Mount Weather took us in..."

Clarke abruptly stands and pulls Bellamy to the window.

"There are survivors in Mount Weather?"

"Not anymore," Clarke says grimly. "Like you, they thought the ground was unhabitable. None of the clans had traveled that far west yet. We were their first contact. And because we'd survived exposure, they thought they could, too."

Bellamy stares at her.

"The radiation killed them. Sort of," Clarke says with a sob. She clutches Bellamy's hand like a vice. "It shouldn't be possible, I know. But they died, and then they got back up and killed my dad. Nearly killed Wells, too, until I killed most of them."

"You were eight," Bellamy says in disbelief.

"An eight year old who knew how to read the labels on a mechanical panel," Clarke continues, her voice barely above a whisper. "Once they followed me back inside, I sealed the floor and hit the incinerator."

She closes her eyes.

"A few of them didn't take the bait," she says. "They wandered off into the forest, preying on the clans... and ten years later, my curse lives on. Because of me, the clans live in fear. We keep quiet because noise makes them swarm. We dress like them when we leave our villages so they mistake us for one of them, from a distance. And it's all my fault."

"This isn't a metaphor, is it?" Bellamy asks, cursing his own assumptions. "The things that attacked us, those are really the dead come back to life?"

"Yes."

Bellamy stares at the horizon and swallows hard.

"We didn't burn them," he says, feeling a lump in his throat.

"What?"

"After you left," Bellamy says with dawning horror. "The bodies. We buried them." 

"_What?_ Where?" Clarke asks urgently.

He looks at her and sees his own fear reflected in her eyes.

"Just outside the camp," Bellamy whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not really a wedding person, but I wanted to write something Cool, and for some reason my brain remembered the portion of middle school where all the boys went Feral and covered their hands in deodorant so they could be set on fire without burning (too badly) and I was like...... yes, perfect. Obviously, please do not try this at home.


	3. it has ended for me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CONTENT WARNINGS:** light gore, some minor character undeath/redeath, mild existential dread, and fire.

_"We didn't burn them."_

_"What?"_

_"After you left. The bodies. We buried them." _

Clarke pulls some strings with their newly minted trade alliance and gets them all horses. _There's no time to waste_, she explains as she gives everyone a crash course in riding that turns out to be simultaneously far too long of a delay for his nerves, and far too brief to teach Bellamy how to sit in the saddle without chaffing his thighs. It's a several hours journey to the dropship, since the horses will need rest, and by now, Clarke says, the dead will have already risen.

And if any more delinquents are dead, it will be Bellamy's fault.

The dread weighing upon them keeps the whole party quiet and cooperative. Each time Bellamy even remotely considers slowing down to ease the painful cramping in his legs, he thinks of the delinquents. Some of the sharpshooters he trained still remain at the dropship but Bellamy took the most promising fighters with him to Polis, mistakenly believing the greatest threat would come from the Grounders' city, and if Clarke is right about the sound of gunfire only drawing more dead to battle, their first instinct to fight back might be their downfall.

During one of their few breaks to stretch their legs and let the horses drink from a bubbling stream, Clarke takes it upon herself to instruct them how to kill the dead. The two Trikru warriors accompanying them from the capital watch in silence. It's hard to tell what they're thinking, underneath the bone-encrusted masks that obscure their faces, but Bellamy thinks they're being judged on their lack of murder prowess.

"Pain isn't enough to stop them," Clarke says, flipping a short knife around in her hand. The flash of metal is difficult to look away from. "You need to incapacitate them. If you're strong, that's easier. When you're my size, a sharp strike to the spine is the fastest way to bring them down."

There are swords in the saddlebags. Aurora's stories never mentioned how heavy they'd feel in his grasp, and how cold the metal.

_Just like using a baton on rioters_, Bellamy thinks darkly, remembering the training he got on the Ark. _Only the baton is sharp enough to cut, and the rioters are trying even harder to bite you than usual._

They hear the rapid stacatto of gunfire before they see the dropship. Bellamy tries to urge his horse onwards and it rears up on its back legs, letting loose a distressed whinny. Bellamy only narrowly avoids being thrown off by clamping his thighs against the ridges of the saddle and clutching to the horse's neck before Clarke pulls up beside him and grabs the reins.

"We dismount here," she says, and he's reminded again how he thought she held herself like an Alpha Station kid when they first met. Even now she speaks like she knows she'll be obeyed. "The horses will only make battle more dangerous."

"We have to hurry," Miller urges as they tie the horses down in a sheltered cranny of rock. "Our people could be dying."

"If you run head first into their bullets because none of you understand how to fight the dead, it will be your fault," Clarke snaps.

"Guess dressing like the enemy isn't always the best strategy, huh?" Bellamy asks, giving her tattered armour a significant look. He and his militia might not be mistaken for attackers by the defending delinquents, but Clarke and her Trikru companions will look just like them.

"It works when there are no idiots firing guns into the woods," Clarke retorts.

"How much ammunition did we haul out of that bunker?" Monroe asks. "Maybe they'll run out."

"I'm not waiting until just before our friends are swarmed to run in," Bellamy says.

"We don't want to let that racket go on, either," Clarke says. "The noise - "

"Yes, you've said," Miller says.

"Can we just run in yelling not to shoot?"

"_The noise_," Clarke says through gritted teeth.

"Are you volunteering?" Bellamy asks.

"The trees."

One of the Trikru warriors, the huge one, who had so far not said a single word, falls silent as everyone turns to look at him. His voice is unexpectedly soft, Bellamy thinks, for someone of his presence.

"They won't be looking up," the warrior says. "I will get closer than any of you could, and tell them to let you through."

"You always impress me, Lincoln," Clarke says with a smile. It's gone as quick as it came - she straightens up and gives the rest of them a hard look. "Everyone stay close. Lincoln will get to the camp while the rest of us watch for a break in the defences. We need to hold back the dead and make sure the children don't see us before they know not to fire."

Bellamy grips the hilt of his newly adopted sword and gives her a curt nod when she meets his eyes. The hilt is growing warmer to the touch now. Maybe he'll grow used to it after all.

There are more dead in the woods than Bellamy saw buried after the first attack. The first one they encounter is by himself, crouched in the dirt, skeletal fingers sifting through blood-splattered dirt at the roots of a tree. At their approach the creature freezes, and then slowly cocks their head at them.

Bellamy is relieved to see that it's an adult, a stranger, maybe someone loved and lost by a nearby Grounder clan. It's a selfish sort of gratitude, because dead strangers in the forest means the delinquents have attracted more danger, but Bellamy can't help the relief as the dead thing staggers towards them, the grinning skull eager to be introduced. It means they won't have to kill one of their friends and watch them die a second time.

Miller lands the last blow, a wild, powerful swing at the creature's neck. It goes down with a quiet rattle and a terrible smell, and then Miller staggers away, convulsing. Clarke grabs his bloody sleeve before he can wipe the sick away from his mouth.

"Don't you dare get that blood in your mouth," she warns, and Miller nods, shakily, once. The look that passes between them, the understanding, might be friendship one day.

They keep going. The gunfire is slowing now, the shots ringing out only sporadically to discourage the dead that come too close, and Bellamy peers over a fallen tree trunk to get a better look at what the delinquents are planning. In his absence they've only partially rebuilt the wall, not nearly enough to keep anyone out. There are deep trenches dug into the ground but if there are other shelters, Bellamy can't see them from here. It seems like everyone is retreating towards the dropship. _Smart_, Bellamy thinks, with a warm glow of pride in his chest that eases some of the horror of the situation. They waited out an attack last time. They must know they can do it again. Bellamy and his group will be trapped outside, but then, they'll figure something out until the horde loses interest.

"Why have the guns slowed down?" Clarke asks, pressed to his side. "Did anyone see Lincoln make it to them?"

"Haven't seen him since he climbed up a tree," Miller says.

"He's practically invisible," Monroe whispers, peering up at the branches over their heads as though she'll spot him right there.

"What are they doing?"

"Let's get closer," Clarke says. "We can run for it."

But the dropship ramp is already lifting, the last stragglers ducking inside and poking only the muzzles of their rifles out to shoot at the dead who reach for the door. That's when Bellamy notices a low rumbling sound, growing louder and louder into a deafening crescendo. The underside of the dropship begins to glow, and he feels a rush of hot air that makes his ears pop.

Understanding hits all at once as the dead close in on the dropship, groaning and banging their rotting bodies against the metal.

"They're firing the engines," Bellamy yells, grabbing the back of Clarke's jacket and hauling her closer. "Run!"

Everyone scatters in the chaos. Bellamy's not sure if the other Trikru warrior understand what a rocket or a blast zone is, but he has no idea what happens to them or where any of the others go - there is only Clarke's hand in his, her grip warm and tight and her pulse racing against his as he hauls her over fallen logs and rocky ground. It must be Raven's plan. He doesn't know who else would be crazy enough to come up with this. He'd be proud if he wasn't so focused on putting distance between them and the engines.

"What's happening?" Clarke asks, panting at their speed.

"They're going to light a ring of fire," Bellamy shouts. He sees understanding dawn on her.

_On the ground, we burn the dead._ Looks like someone learns quick.

A high-pitched whine splits the air, and without any other warning, the world explodes around them. A rush of hot air at their backs propels them forwards. Bellamy grabs Clarke and throws his weight down into a sheltered hollow. The impact knocks all the air out of his chest. The fire that blazes just over their heads consumes it all. Bellamy turns his face into the soft, molding layer of wet leaves underneath them and gasps for breath. Clarke trembles next to him, presses so close he can feel every shake. Maybe it's not her. Maybe it's the ground, tremoring under Raven's handiwork.

After he gets his body under control he rolls Clarke over, his hands hovering just above her, looking for blood, for another reason to feel guilt. There are tiny embers in her hair, singing it black upon contact. He picks out the biggest ones and extinguishes the others between his fingertips. Her eyes are wide and watering from the smoke.

_I'm okay_, her lips say. He can't hear anything over the sound of that high-pitched note. Her mouth keeps moving. Bellamy presses his fingers to her throat and feels the vibration of her vocal cords under his fingertips. He shakes his head, points to his ears.

_Are you hurt?_ Clarke asks, maybe. It's hard to tell. His head is ringing and his lungs are burning from the smoke that hangs like a curtain over the safety of their hollow but he's still in one piece. That's still something. Bellamy presses Clarke's hand to the line of his jaw, so she can feel his heartbeat and be reassured, and watches her breathe out shakily, her eyes wide and dark with fear and disbelief.

_It's okay_, he mouths. He keeps saying it until the hard lines of her body start to relax, bit by bit, until she curls into him, her fists clutching at the front of his shirt. Bellamy presses closer to her, feeling warmth that isn't the fires burning around them, trying to convince himself they're still alive. If this is the afterlife, it smells awful. Clarke's hair tickles his chin. He brushes it out of the way and kisses her soot-smudged forehead. She turns her face into the curve of his neck and breathes into his collar. It tickles but Bellamy is afraid to let go or push her away.

It's only movement out of the corner of his eye that makes him look up.

A figure staggers out of the smoke, still wearing the bloodstained shirt they buried him in. His skin is blistering under the fire. Dirt tumbles out from the creases of his jacket, from his hair and nostrils. Atom's knees give out just steps away. Bellamy feels like his eyes are staring through him even though they're so cloudy Atom shouldn't be able to see a thing through them. 

Clarke hands him a knife and Bellamy takes it on autopilot. He can still remember dragging Atom's dead weight back to the dropship, not knowing yet that it was too late. He can hear his ears ringing and now, overlaid, he can hear Octavia's voice begging him to save Atom. This knife isn't cold to the touch. It's blazing hot in his palm from the sweltering heat of the blast. A hand touches his wrist gently. He drags his gaze up with great difficulty. Clarke's lips are moving but he can't read them or hear her over the ringing and his own pulse. Atom reaches for them, his jaw slack and stained dark with the blood he choked to death on. This close, Bellamy can see the gravedirt under his fingernails. _Did they dig themselves out?_

Bellamy's hand goes slack and drops the knife into the bed of rotting leaves. Atom's impossibly cloudy eyes track its fall. He collapses and starts crawling as the flames lick at his torn clothing. His mouth is moving, and to his horror, Bellamy thinks he might be saying _please_ over and over. He doesn't know if the dead can do that now or if he's seeing things in his grief.

Clarke picks up the knife and approaches Atom gingerly. He snaps his teeth at her half-heartedly, and then she's behind him, pressing her foot down on his back, pinning the unnatural body to the ground. Clarke looks up at Bellamy. He thinks she's saying something about the spine as she jams the knife into the back of Atom's neck with both hands. Atom closes his eyes and shudders once, his whole body seizing before coming to a stop, this time for good.

He might have been saying thank you. Bellamy's not sure if that makes this any easier.

Clarke staggers back into the hollow with him and sits at his side, their backs against a tree. They stay there for a long time as the forest burns, coughing on smoke as the body at their feet remains blessedly still. The fire that they held in their hands to seal their marriage is nothing in comparison. _This_ is what you forge something in.

Eventually the fires start to eat themselves up and Bellamy's hearing returns, though the distant ringing lingers. The mad dash away from the dropship's blast zone has aggravated the ankle that only barely had time to heal from the first wave of the dead, so Clarke leaves him for a while and returns with a walking stick that isn't half-charcoal. They leave Atom to burn by wordless agreement.

The dropship door opens early the next morning. Miller and Monroe have shown up, having found their own shelter from the blast to Bellamy's immense relief. There's no sign of the two Trikru warriors.

Octavia is the first one out of the dropship, her hand trembling around a familiar-looking sword. She doesn't drop it when she sees Bellamy, but she does run across the mass graveyard between them to throw herself into his arms, so that's something. Bellamy holds her close and tries not to cry. It's been a while since he felt wanted by her. Maybe, maybe she will forgive him for getting their mother killed. Maybe.

Lincoln emerges with the others, having apparently made it to the dropship before the door closed. Bellamy gives him a nod when they make eye contact.

"Thank you for keeping them safe," he says. Lincoln's eyes stray to Octavia's white-knuckled grip on his spare sword.

"The work is not done," he says gravely, but Bellamy is grateful all the same.

Clarke made a beeline past him to Raven, who he's glad to see is awake and sitting up in a cot. There are dark circles under her eyes and her face is grim as Clarke taps her way down Raven's leg. Bellamy reaches them just as Raven shakes her head somewhere underneath the knee.

Raven tilts her head back and scrutinizes him for a moment.

"Not a bad day's work for a girl who can't feel her leg, huh?" she asks flatly.

"It was a nice explosion," Bellamy concedes. "Wish I didn't have to see it up close. How bad is it?"

"We don't have enough fuel left to pull another stunt like that," Raven says.

Bellamy sighs.

"No, your condition, Raven. How are you feeling?"

"Like hell, asshole, what do you want me to say? My spine hurts like a bitch and I can't wiggle my toes and from what we've seen of the ground so far, that's going to get me _killed_."

"We won't let that happen," Clarke swears.

"Who asked you?" Raven snaps. Before Clarke can respond, Bellamy lays a hand on her shoulder and squeezes.

"Can you let Raven and I talk?" he asks. "Alone?"

He watches her walk away, and casts nervous looks over all the delinquents still lingering nearby before Raven clears her throat.

"The other Grounder told us some bullshit about you _marrying_ her? So if you're about to say I have to play nice because you have a crush - "

"I don't have a crush," Bellamy replies automatically. He lowers his voice and leans in close to Raven's pale, strained face. "Listen. I know you don't like me, after the radio - "

"The attempted murder isn't promising, either," Raven says dryly. Bellamy shushes her.

"That's exactly what I'm here about," Bellamy says, and quickly fills her in on the story Clarke told him about her and Wells' origins. "We have no idea what we're up against, Raven," Bellamy finishes. "Right now, we need them. And if they find out I might have killed the Commander's father it'll float our chance at a peaceful alliance."

"That's convenient for you," Raven murmurs, but her voice is thoughtful, less harsh. "Abby is a good doctor. Maybe he's recovered by now."

"_I shot your dad in space but he survived_ is not a good foundation for a friendship," Bellamy says. "Do you understand?"

"Yes. We keep your murderous tendencies a secret from your wife for the good of everyone," Raven says. "It's a shame. I kinda like her."

"I couldn't tell," Bellamy mutters.

"What?"

Bellamy gives her a disbelieving look, and Raven only raises her eyebrows. He sighs and lets it be.

"I think the blast destroyed what was left of the dropship's communications system, anyway," Raven says. "I don't think Monty and I will be able to repair it. We're good, but we're not gods."

Bellamy says nothing.

"The Ark might die," she says.

"I know." His voice is quiet. Ashamed.

"If they decide to come down on their own," Raven says carefully, "We can't control what they do or say to the Grounders."

"We can worry about that if it happens," Bellamy says. "Right now, I can save the delinquents."

Raven nods once and then leans her head back, her eyelids slipping down. She looks so tired.

"I didn't want to kill him, you know," he says. Raven cracks one eye open. "I just didn't think I had a choice."

"Sure," Raven says, her voice flat, unreadable.

It's grueling work to set about clearing the bones of the dead from the remains of their camp. Bellamy is glad that enough of the older kids volunteer to help that he doesn't need to tell anyone else to. The Grounders who lurk about the edges of the camp come and go with fruit and seeds and fresh meat that they teach the younger kids to prepare. Without the radio project to keep him occupied, Monty throws himself into building a garden.

Clarke is the most constant Grounder presence around the camp, and the most open to conversation, so the delinquents begin to gravitate towards her, drawn both by their curiosity and what seems like near-constant injuries. When they rebuild the wall - out of metal scraps salvaged from a nearby pre-apocalypse ruin and strong, young wood that meets Grounder standards - Clarke plucks out splinters with keen eyes and gentle reprimands. When the delinquents divide themselves into warcamps in the aftermath of dramatic break-ups, Clarke learns all their names and stories. When they cut themselves skinning dinner, Clarke binds the wound with poultices and brings them to observe Bellamy's handiwork - _it's not so different from sewing,_ he mumbles when she asks how he's picked it up so quickly. _Just bloodier_. Like everything on the ground is.

It's easy to be married to Clarke at first, because none of the delinquents really know what that's supposed to mean on the Ground, besides the vague promise that they will eventually have to start paying back the trade that helps them rebuild their camp. Some of the delinquents decide to give Bellamy shit for it, and he wishes they would stop, up until their attention drifts to Octavia's obvious attachment to Lincoln instead, and he wishes they would go back to harassing him instead. When he brings it up to Clarke she only frowns in a now familiar way and tells him that Lincoln is a good person - and he might very well be, but Octavia is seventeen years old and haunted, a wild animal prowling around the confines of their camp with a sword she barely knows how to use. Every time he tries to ask about Lincoln she scoffs and reminds him that he _married_ a Grounder without asking her opinion first, so he doesn't exactly have any high ground here, does he?

But the marriage isn't a problem until the delinquents finish building the first cabins. He thinks it's just going to be the healer's hut that Clarke was looking forward to, at first, until they're looking over the finished product and Harper proudly kicks open the door to the back room.

"And this is where you'll be living!" she says cheerfully, sweeping them through the doorway into the back half of the cabin. It's not very large - just enough room for a bed roll against the far wall, pegs on the wall to hang some clothes, and a small place to sit in front of the lopsided fireplace in the center of the cabin that heats the front room as well. Bellamy runs his hand over the stacked stones of the fireplace. It's good work, maybe their best yet, sealed with clay from the riverbed. They'll need it, come winter.

"Do you like it, Clarke?" he asks. They've been so busy with the rebuilding he feels like he barely sees her when they're not working, and so it's with some surprise that he realizes he wants to see her smile.

"I do," she says, opening up the shutters to let the daylight in. "Is Bellamy going to be nearby?"

Harper blinks.

"Well aren't you..." she says. "Aren't you married?"

"Yes," Bellamy says slowly.

Clarke catches on faster than he does, if the round 'o' shape of her mouth is any indication.

"This cabin is for both of us?" she asks Harper quickly.

"Yeah," Harper says. "Everyone's grouping up so we can build enough cabins before winter and... we thought you'd want a place to yourselves."

Bellamy stares at her for a moment, but she's not teasing them, like some of the other kids have. Harper's genuinely serious.

"It's perfect," Clarke says quickly, squeezing Harper's shoulder. "Can you just - can you give us a moment?"

"Sure," Harper says before scurrying out. "Come find me in the mess hall if you have any questions!"

Bellamy watches the door swing shut behind her.

"Uh..." he says. "I think she thinks we're actually married."

"We _are_ actually married," Clarke snaps.

"You know what I mean," Bellamy says. "I barely know you."

"You could ask."

Her eyes are fierce and fixed upon his and so very, very blue. Bellamy feels shivers go down his spine. Every time he thinks he'll get used to that gaze, Clarke looks at him, and he's back on that bridge, one deep breath away from having his heart punctured.

"I know this is just a political alliance," Clarke says, sounding frustrated. "But I was hoping... I could have been one of you, in a different universe. If my father hadn't brought me down. I was hoping I could learn about where I came from, that maybe we'd even be friends."

"There hasn't exactly been a lot of time for that with all the work we have to do," Bellamy says defensively, and then, seeing Clarke's face fall seconds before she covers it up with a cold mask, he immediately regrets it. He rubs at his temples and when she makes to push past him, he reaches out. "Wait!" he says quickly. "I'm sorry, hear me out. These past few weeks have been really stressful, but I'm sorry I didn't think about what you must be feeling. You're... surrounded by strangers, away from your friends and family - "

"I don't have family anymore, Bellamy," Clarke says tiredly.

"We could be your family," Bellamy says quickly. "Me and my, uh, 90 juvenile delinquents."

The cold mask cracks with a smile. Clarke ducks her head to hide it, but Bellamy watches the curve of her cheek.

"Are you lonely?" he asks. The curve vanishes.

"Like you said," Clarke says, "There's a lot of work to keep us occupied - "

"That's not a good enough excuse," Bellamy says. He reaches out a hand. "I... we could talk more."

Clarke takes his outstretched fingers slowly, wonderingly. For some reason he's still surprised when he feels her calluses against his. It's the hair, the braided crown. In his head she still sometimes feels like a princess from Aurora's stories; locked away inside a tower, inaccessible, distant. He has spent too long thinking the walls are insurmountable.

"I think we have to live together," she says. "At least for this first winter, so everyone has enough space. In the spring when we go to the coast there will be more room. Less dead to worry about. Everyone can have their own cabin, if they want."

"Well," Bellamy says with a smile, "If it's only a few months with you, I'm sure I can manage."

She drops his hand and swats at his shoulder.

"Get out of my cabin, roommate," she says. "I have to decide where I'm going to put all my herbs, and your face is distracting."

"I'm going, I'm going," Bellamy says, holding his hands up in surrender.

He's halfway through his guard shift before he realizes she might have been complimenting him.

The last breath of summer fades, and sooner than Bellamy imagined autumn is bleeding into winter. Though the first snowfall is half-hearted, the flakes melting almost before they touch the ground and the outstretched palms of awed delinquents, it brings with it the smell of cold from the north. Bellamy always thought of it as the smell of small metal places, and he resents that it seems to have followed them from the Ark to the ground - or worse, was here waiting all along to dredge up memories of sitting in their apartment alone after Aurora had been floated and Octavia was waiting to follow.

He and Clarke pass the fall with their bed rolls on either side of the fireplace. The first morning he wakes up shivering, he adds more logs to the fire and stokes it until it's socially acceptable enough for him to go outside and start doing chores. The second morning he wakes up shivering, he hesitates only momentarily before getting up and dragging his bed roll closer to Clarke's. The chill air raises goosebumps on his skin and he's shivering more violently before he gets back underneath the covers. Clarke wakes, either from his footsteps or his teeth chattering or the elbow he accidentally pokes into her ribcage.

"This okay?" he asks. "It's freezing."

She gives an incomprehensible hum in response and pulls him closer, her leg hooking around his knee, her golden head nuzzling into his shoulder. He gets warmer, but he sure doesn't manage to fall back asleep. In the morning her cheeks are rosy with cold, and she blows on her fingers to keep them warm as the tea brews.

"We're going to get very comfortable with each other this winter, husband," she says without looking at him.

"Pity," he says. "Is there tea for me, too?"

"No," she replies, just before passing him the second cup.

Their trade agreement with Trikru means they're a little more prepared to handle the second snowfall. This one lingers a night or two, and Bellamy wakes up the first few nights listening to delinquents giggle as frost-rimmed leaves crunch and shatter under their boots on the way to the latrines. When the cold starts to lose its luster and it begins to sink in that this will be their reality for the next few months, they dress in warm Grounder furs with minimal fuss, and one day Bellamy looks around the camp and realizes that except for the occasional shock of a red shirt or one delinquent's pale green hijab, his people look nothing like the children the Ark sent to die. The hard work of building a defensible camp under Clarke's careful direction has given most of them muscle mass and callouses, and the fading sun has given others - Bellamy included - deep tans and freckles that linger even after the days grow short.

Would their parents on the Ark recognize them, if they met again? Would they still want their wayward forest children? Would the delinquents still _need_ to be wanted by them?

It's a theoretical question, mostly. The delinquents watch for the Ark's transit across the sky at night, but it remains distant and never-changing, as friendly as one of the other pinpricks in the sky. It may as well be no closer than the constellations, for all the signs of life they get from it. If anyone on the Ark is still alive, they aren't coming down to join the delinquents yet.

The trees that survived the dropship's crash slowly shake off their leaves as the frost lingers longer and longer in the mornings. By the time the last stubborn leaves fall, Clarke has, somehow, become his best friend.

Their fragile normalcy lasts until the exodus ship streaks through the sky just after dinner one night. Bellamy thinks it's a shooting star, at first, but then it's too big, too bright. All around him delinquents abandon their meals and rush outside of the mess hall to see what the others are yelling about. Still others hurriedly shush each other - like their Grounder teachers, they have become wary of noise, of attracting the attention of the dead.

Raven stumbles to his side, the joints of her metal brace having frozen as she sat still for dinner, and leans against him as they watch the bright streak of re-entry vanish into the trees to the west.

"That's Mount Weather, isn't it?" Raven asks.

Bellamy's mouth is dry with terror. It must be. That's where the Ark would have been aiming, after all. They don't know any better. No one told them.

Far away, the ground trembles with the impact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raise your hand if you miss season 1. :(


	4. many times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CONTENT WARNINGS:** undead, violence and some gore, shitty field medicine - specifically limb amputation, and discussion of whether or not to euthanize someone. There's also a Lot of swearing.
> 
> If you need more specific warnings or want to discuss with me before reading, you can absolutely message me on tumblr.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Bellamy says as he shuts the cabin door behind him. Miller winces at the rush of cold air that manages to make it in with him and send sparks from the cackling hearth-fire spiraling up the chimney. Raven doesn't even look up from her last minute wiring.

"You're the one who said this was urgent," Miller reminds him.

"Yeah, well, Clarke turned out to be more difficult to distract than I thought," Bellamy says. 

"Clarke can be distracted?" Harper asks. "That sounds fake. Have you met your wife, Bellamy?"

"I'm on Harper's side, here," Monty says with a small, sly smile. "She can smell deception."

"Very funny," Bellamy says.

"We don't have time for this," Raven says. "We all know why we're here. That Ark ship landed near Mount Weather, and they have no idea what Earth is like. They're easy prey for the dead. They could walk into a horde any minute."

Bellamy has to force himself not to look away when she makes eye contact with him from across the cabin. Several months ago when they quietly decided to stop trying to contact the Ark, leaving the other Sky people to die felt more theoretical. Now it's a concrete choice with consequences they can actually influence. 

"The flip side of that," Bellamy says, hating himself for even bringing it up, "Is that we have no control over what those people from the Ark will do, now that they're on the ground. They have no obligation to honour the agreements we've made with the other clans. They're probably not interested in learning from our mistakes. And there's a very good chance that they're not going to forgive me for shooting the Chancellor - who happens to be the Commander's long lost dad - on my way down. That means Clarke will find out, which means the Commander will find out, which means the alliance that is currently keeping us alive is probably doomed."

"You're asking us to choose," Miller says, always a quick study. Bellamy nods curtly.

"The Ark deserves a chance to live," Monty says almost immediately. When all eyes turn to him, he raises his hands. "How is this even a question? Bellamy, we're only alive because someone took mercy on us and taught us how to survive the dead. The Ark deserves that chance too."

"They threw us away," Miller says. "We owe them nothing."

"It's not about owing," Harper argues. 

"We should help them," Monty insists. "Clarke gave us mercy once. If we deserve it, she'll give it to us again."

"I think mercy says more about the person giving it than the person receiving it," Miller says. "It doesn't matter what we deserve - "

"Three - two," Raven interrupts. They all fall silent and look at her. "Based on what everyone's arguing, that seems like the logical outcome of a vote. Unless you want to surprise me, Bellamy."

The muscle in his jaw twitches despite his attempt to remain blank. 

"Three - two," he agrees, his voice flat. 

"Well, you lose," she says. "Everyone pack up. You're going to check on what remains of that Ark ship."

They decide to set off at dawn, in two groups disguised as a hunting party and a scouting party. Bellamy quietly arranges for Mbege to take a group out later in the day to check the nearest snares for prey, but the camp is doing well enough with their smoked stores and supplies from Trikru's last visit that their food levels shouldn't be too heavily impacted by the deception.

Clarke is still half-asleep when he wakes and dresses. The chill of winter has driven them to sleep so close lately that it's impossible not to wake her when he gently crawls out from underneath her haphazardly thrown limbs, but they stayed up late last night speculating about the ship from the Ark, and now her eyes blink slow and languid at him. In a few minutes she'll be asleep again, and Bellamy will be several hours into Mount Weather's territory before anyone catches on. Clarke stretches, almost catlike, her face scrunched up and her wrists extended up out of the fur blankets.

"You're not going to check on that ship, are you?" Clarke murmurs.

_Too clever for your own good_. Bellamy gives her a pained smile.

"We'll talk when I come back," he says. Everything in Bellamy tells him to look away, that he doesn't deserve to see her like this, warm and soft and trusting that he is not about to betray her. That he hasn't been betraying her, in a way, since moments after their marriage, when she told him who Wells was and he said nothing.

It's the coward in him that strokes a knuckle down the side of Clarke's face before pulling away like he's been burned. And it's cruel, but he can't help the words that fall out of his mouth next:

"Can I kiss you?"

Clarke frowns a little, her reaction time dulled by sleep. She's still half-dreaming, he thinks. This moment is stolen. Their whole marriage has been stolen.

She tilts her head up, a soft noise in the back of her throat, and one pale hand pulls at his collar. Bellamy lets her tug him down and makes to kiss her cheek, but at the last moment, she turns her face. It's only the third time he's ever kissed her. Once to practice, overlooking Polis. Once to bind them, in front of a crowd of strangers. And now, once more, to break his heart forever. Their alliance is forfeit because of the truth he didn't share. She owes him none of this, certainly not her fingers tangling in his hair and pulling him closer, certainly not the quiet moan she makes into his mouth when he impulsively deepens the kiss.

It's hell. It's the most beautiful moment of his life. And it's over too soon because his traitorous lungs burn for air.

Clarke gives him a dazzling smile as they pull apart. The blankets over her chest rise distractingly.

"We, um, we should talk when you get back," she says breathlessly. Her happiness gives way to uncertainty, slowly, like blood dissipating in water, as she sees he isn't smiling. "Bellamy?"

He hates himself so, very much. Maybe, eventually, she will think he did this for the delinquents, and not for himself, as he is afraid he has.

"I shouldn't have done that," he says roughly. "I'm sorry."

Clarke's face is anguished.

"I thought..."

That's her mistake. She's always thought too highly of him. He forces himself to keep looking, to drink in the sight of her tousled hair and slack mouth one last time.

When they come back - if they come back - he will have to tell her the truth. And he's not ready.

"You thought wrong," Bellamy says quietly. He puts his shoes on and grabs his bag and is gone before they can make the sudden chasm between them any deeper.

Raven is already waiting at the camp's western gate with Monroe and Monty.

"Scouting party already went out," she tells him as he draws close. "I gave Harper a short-range radio. Monty has one, I have the third. Keep me updated." A beat, then: "You look like a kicked puppy. What happened?"

"Our alliance with Trikru is probably going to fall apart in a few days, that's what's happened," Bellamy snaps.

Raven's mouth opens and closes. Opens again with a look of dawning realization.

"You picked a fine time to realize you're in love with your wife," Raven says. On her other side, Monty discreetly slaps himself in the face. Monroe looks up at the blank gray sky and whistles under her breath.

_Love?_

All the wind is knocked out of Bellamy's chest. He shakes his head roughly.

"That can't - that isn't," he says. The one saving grace of this moment is that Miller isn't here. Miller would never let him forget this, asshole that he is. Barely talks and wastes half the words he does deign to speak on roasting Bellamy. "Fuck you Raven."

"Uh huh," she says.

"Has anyone seen Octavia this morning?" he asks.

A chorus of _no's_.

"Figures," he mutters. "Keep her in the dark as long as possible, Raven. The instant she figures it out, she'll tell Lincoln and Clarke and they'll drag us back home."

Raven nods briskly.

"Be careful out there today," she says, slapping his shoulder in what he thinks might be an olive branch. "That ship will have gotten all the dead worked up."

He forces a smile and then they're marching out to join Miller's party. He turns back to look at the camp once, and finds Raven cutting a lonely figure against the backdrop of snow, the way she's leaning on her good leg made more obvious by the gate's straight lines. It can't be easy for her to stand and watch them go.

After the Ring of Fire, Lincoln and a few other Grounders from nearby villages began teaching the delinquents the vital and brutal art of battling the dead, with various degrees of obvious disdain for the delinquents' soft hands and lack of experience. The woods around the dropship have been fairly quiet since then however, and they haven't had a lot of opportunities to practice their new swordsmanship. The few dead that have wandered their way so far have been slow and alone, easy marks.

A few hours into the journey to Mount Weather and the number of dead spotted climbs higher. They avoid most and destroy the ones that come too close.

The sky is too dark with clouds to judge when noon might be, but when their stomachs start growling they break for a meal at the feet of a massive marble statue of a seated man, his features obscured by snow and the gnarled and gray branches of some very ambitious ivy. Crumbled columns and the remains of some long-collapsed roof leave the ground around them bumpy and uneven, the edges smoothed out by a blanket of snow. Every mound out of the corner of his eye feels like it could obscure the dead.

Winter on Earth is beautiful, but Bellamy's not sure it's worth it. And it's fucking _cold_. His breath mists out in front of his face. He'll have to find somewhere else to sleep, when they get back to camp. And convince someone to room with Clarke, so she won't be cold and alone. _That's assuming she'll want to stay_, his mind whispers, and his jaw clenches painfully. _Focus on the mission. Think of anything else but how betrayed she looked this morning. How much worse it will feel when she realizes how deep that betrayal runs._

Bellamy looks out over the forest that has crept up to the stone man's feet and wonders what his view must have looked like, once upon a time. They never found out why the world ended in history class. The Ark didn't have those answers. But it feels, just a little bit, like he understands how it must have felt in the last moments.

"I see dead," Miller says suddenly, and everyone presses themselves lower to the ground as a trio of dead amble past in the distance, their trajectory diagonal to the team of delinquents hiding in the snow. "I think we're far enough, though."

Then, the radios crackle. Harper tucks hers under her coat quickly to muffle it, and everyone watches to see if the dead react.

They don't.

"We have to be more sparing with the check-ins, Raven," Monty says into his radio. "There's a lot more traffic than we expected."

"Well, your day is about to get worse," Raven's tinny voice says grimly. "Word got out. Clarke, Octavia and Lincoln are headed your way. I've _never_ seen Lincoln that anxious."

Miller lets loose a stream of curses that probably could have single-handedly landed in the Skybox. Monroe muffles a groan into the crook of her arm.

"Seriously?" Bellamy asks, frustrated. "You couldn't have kept them off our trail any longer?"

"I tried," Raven snaps back. "Have you _met_ your sister?"

He has, unfortunately. Bellamy glances up at the sky, considering. Snow falls gently from above, the flakes light and sparse. They won't be enough to obscure their footsteps in the snow, and even if they did - everyone saw the Ark ship fall. They'll head in their direction.

"They'll catch up," Monty estimates. "They're fewer, they have more experience traveling around the dead."

"We'll stay ahead as long as we can," Bellamy says. "If we get to the ship, it won't matter any more. Pack up. Lunch is over."

It feels like his fault that Harper is attacked.

Night falls early in the winter, and fast. Bellamy keeps them moving as the sky grows steadily darker, the clouds a washed-out purple. The snow has let up but the visibility won't last long, and they're still an hour out from Mount Weather. Everyone is tense and exhausted by the long trek through the snow.

They creep around a handful of dead that milling about aimlessly in a clearing and come to the edge of a frozen stream.

"Do you think it can hold our weight?" Monty murmurs, as Miller experimentally puts one foot out and pushes down heavily on the ice. There's a soft scraping sound from underneath and water bubbles up from the edges of the ice sheet, but it holds.

"Doesn't matter, we have to cross," Bellamy tells them quietly, with a furtive look over their shoulder. The dead they just sneaked around are still within earshot, and by now, Clarke and the others will be hot on their trail too. They can't afford to be trapped along this shore, crossing their fingers that it'll get narrower or there will be a convenient fallen tree to cross on further upstream. It will be too dark to search soon.

Monty and Monroe make a run for it, holding on to each other for balance as their boots slip across the ice. It creaks ominously below them. Bellamy doesn't let out his breath until they're safely across and turning back to see the others with distant and pale faces.

"You two next," Bellamy says to Miller and Harper, as he watches the high ground for the dead they left behind, feeling as if they'll crest over the ridge at any moment. The safety of the dropship's camp made him soft. His heart feels like it's been galloping non-stop since they crossed the unspoken border into the land around Mount Weather that no Grounder will touch or acknowledge.

Miller starts across, Harper a step or two behind him. The ice creaks under Miller, as it did for Monroe and Monty, and Harper changes her trajectory, aiming for a spot where the other bank of the stream juts out slightly.

There's no warning.

One moment Harper is shuffling across, her arms spread wide for balance, and then the ice breaks apart underneath her with an ear-splitting _crack_ that echoes far into the woods around them. Harper instinctively yelps as she's plunged waist-deep into freezing water, and Bellamy's heart forgets how to beat. There are noises from behind them, agonized moans drifting on the wind. The dead are curious.

Bellamy swears and runs forward, as far as he dares. Monty is crouched on the other river bank, hissing:

"Spread your weight out! Try and climb back up!"

Miller reaches Harper's side just as Bellamy does. Smaller pieces of ice break off as Harper claws her way out of the river, but together they manage to haul her out. Her teeth are already chattering violently. Bellamy looks over his shoulder and sees tattered, lopsided figures stumbling to the ridge overlooking the river.

"Raven's radio!" Harper says, peeling off her wet gloves with shaking fingers to fiddle with the dials on it. The lights have gone dark and cold. There's no static to be heard.

"Fuck the damn radio," Bellamy swears, grabbing her arm and hooking it over his shoulders. Harper's legs are limp beneath her for a moment before she gets her footing. She's shivering so hard that Bellamy can feel it through both their coats. Even with Miller supporting her other side, they're moving too slow. Monty grabs the waterlogged radio when they reach the bank and shoves it into his pack with the other one. Monroe is a few steps ahead, her sword out and ready.

"Bellamy," she says, low and worried. "There's more."

They clamber up the uneven ground and see shadows in the forest.

"We're not dying here," Miller says.

"There's nowhere to run!" Monty says. And even if they knew where to go, it's growing darker by the second. They'll be running blind in just a few moments.

"Trees?" Harper says. She's shivering so hard Bellamy's not sure she can climb, and even if she can - the horror dawns on him that there's no way to warm her up. Even if they get up into the trees to spend the night, Harper will die of hypothermia before they wait out the dead.

"Behind you!" Monroe says, sharp and urgent, no attempt to keep quiet now. Miller spins around just in time to embed his axe in the chest of a straggler who stumbled out from behind a tree, reaching for them with bloody, frostbitten hands.

Bellamy lets go of Harper to pull out his spear and ward off another attack.

"Go!" he calls out. "Look for a tree we can climb!"

He keeps one hand clamped along Harper's arm, dragging her along after the others. The dead just keep coming from what seems like all sides. Gone now is their aimless wandering - the sight of real, living people seems to lend speed and desperation to their rotting limbs. They're chased by a chorus of excited, wheezing shrieks and Bellamy starts to lose track of how many dead bodies he and Miller are fending off. There's not enough time to stop for a killing blow through the spinal cord, like Clarke taught them. Half the creatures they strike down get back up and rejoin the back of the pack.

"Why are there so many?" Monroe cries out.

Harper stumbles and falls, going down hard, and Bellamy's momentum carries him several steps forward before he skids to a stop in the snow.

He turns back just in time to see her roll onto her back and raise her arms up against the creature that descends upon her with empty eyes and snapping teeth.

"Harper!" Bellamy bellows, raising his spear and charging. He's too late. He sees the dead thing's teeth catch and tear at her sleeve, her wrists exposed by her missing gloves. She tries to shove it off and can only scream as its teeth sink down in her forearm. Bellamy plunges the spear through the creature's neck and pins it to the frozen ground next to her, but Harper's blood is already spilling out onto the snow. Even in the dawning moonlight the splatters are stark against the white.

"It bit me," Harper sobs, clutching her ravaged arm to her chest and curling up. "It bit me, Bellamy, it bit me, I'm going to die - "

"No you're not," Bellamy says fiercely, hauling her up into his arms. Blood and ice water drip together.

"I see a light!" Monty calls, and on their right - yes, golden light, weaving through the trees, bobbing up and down. A second later Bellamy registers the sound of hoofbeats.

Then the horses break out of the darkness, Clarke at their lead, her face a mask of fury, and high up above her head she holds a burning torch that she swings around as her horse circles the clearing. The horde of dead stumble back from the fire, shrieking and hissing, clawing at their eyes and at each other to get away. Octavia's horse rears back in panic from the dead - she's thrown off and rolls back to her feet, teeth bared, and decapitates one of the dead before Bellamy can say _look out._ Harper is still sobbing and shivering in his arms.

Miller captures the rearing horse's reins and motions to Bellamy.

"Put her on!" he shouts, and together they wrestle Harper into a seated position in the saddle.

"Octavia - " Bellamy says, and a second later his sister shoves past him.

"I got her," she snaps, hauling herself up behind Harper and wrapping a protective arm around her waist. "Keep up."

"There's a shelter," Lincoln says as Monroe climbs up behind him. "We might make it."

The next few minutes pass in a blur - Bellamy is only aware of running, of his breath echoing harshly in his ears and the painful rasp of cold, dry air down his throat, and the hoofbeats of Clarke's horse just behind him and the golden-hot glow of her torch held up to ward off the dead. All the warmth left in the world seems to narrow down to that one point of light.

Before they know it Lincoln is swinging out of his saddle and kicking up snow. The horses gallop away as soon as their reins are let go of, and Lincoln makes no move to stop them. With any luck, they'll return to the dropship or a Grounder village.

"It's here somewhere," Lincoln says. "Look for a hatch."

They fall to their knees, scrambling at the ground. This clearing in the woods looks exactly like any other clearing to Bellamy. He hopes this is a gamble worth betting all their lives on. He can hear Harper's teeth chattering violently from here.

"We're going to get you warmed up," Clarke says, quiet and gentle.

"It bit me," Harper chokes out. Bellamy stops digging and draws his spear before he can think.

"Don't kill her," he says to Clarke. He watches her go very still except for her eyes, which dart between his face, the point of the spear, and Harper's bloody arm. It's his fault. He threw Raven's radio in the river. He led this expedition. He let Harper stumble.

"Are you capable of killing me, Bellamy?" Clarke asks quietly.

"Are you fucking kidding me!" Octavia calls out from behind a snowbank. "_Dig_ now, _divorce_ later."

"We have to leave her, Bellamy," Lincoln says. "I'm sorry. She could doom the rest of us."

"Cut it off," Harper says, her eyes wide and afraid. Clarke draws in a sharp, shocked breath.

"Here," Monty calls out, and then, louder, "Here! I found something!"

Everyone scrambles to help him dig and Bellamy hears a clanging impact against metal. The outline of a hatch emerges.

"Can you do it?" Bellamy asks. Clarke bites her lip.

"Please," Harper says.

"I can try," Clarke says. The hatch swings open, and the first of the group start climbing the ladder into pitch darkness. Hands reach up and they lower Harper in. Bellamy is the last one in, and as he closes the hatch over his head, he sees shapes stumbling between the trees. The hatch is heavier than he expects, and he can't quite stop it from shutting without a loud _clang_.

Something hisses softly, and a moment later weak blue light begins to glow from around...

"A single-family bunker, from before the apocalypse," Clarke says breathlessly. "We'll be safe for now. Monty, see if you can get the generator running. Set Harper down here. I need blankets, warm clothes, something to tie a tourniquet. Bellamy, get the axe from the emergency kit in the back. I need something with heft to it that isn't already covered in guts."

Bellamy finds the axe she's talking about and feels sick to his stomach. Harper whimpers a little as Clarke tightens a makeshift tourniquet around her upper arm and Octavia and Monroe start peeling off her soaked pants. The bite marks on Harper's wrist look black in the weak blue light.

"I think I got it!" Monty calls out, and with a low rumble and the faint smell of ozone, the lights over their heads brighten to a warm yellow.

"Perfect," Clarke says. "Hold her down."

"I don't want to turn into one of them," Harper says in a tiny voice. She sounds so terribly young. "Please don't let me."

"Shh," Clarke says, and she starts humming a soft melody Bellamy thinks he's heard around the camp once or twice, when the youngest of the delinquents can't sleep or have nightmares. She reaches for the axe.

Bellamy can't look for the actual amputation. The sound is bad enough. The thud of the axe. The hitch in Clarke's melody. He concentrates on not throwing up while Harper makes wispy little noises, like she's trying to scream and can't find the air. He wants to tell her that she doesn't have to hold back, if that's what she's doing, that they're safe here, but she passes out before he can choke out the words.

No one speaks as Clarke does her work. She asks for bandages, and something to gag Harper with - _just in case_, they all think and do not say aloud - and lastly, volunteers to share body heat. Clarke is one of them, stripping down to her underwear and crawling underneath several layers of blankets with Harper.

"Me too," Miller mutters, roughly discarding most of his clothes and laying on her other side. "We were crossing together. It could've been me."

Bellamy sits on the edge of the bed by Clarke and carefully draws out his handgun. He hasn't used it since the early days on the ground, but it still fits perfectly in his hand. This is the weapon that Shumway gave him. The one that started everything. He points the muzzle at Harper's head. Just in case. He thinks she would want him to, and even if she didn't he thinks he'd still be sitting here with his finger on the trigger.

Monty pulls out the second radio from his pack and rubs at his temples before turning it on. Raven's voice rings out in the bunker, too garbled by static to understand. Monty fiddles with the dials until she comes in clear.

"Raven, check-in," he says.

"Fucking hell," Raven says on the other end, sounding simultaneously relieved and murderous.

"Clarke and her group found us," Monty says. "We've all taken shelter in a very, very cramped bunker."

"Everyone's still in one piece?"

Monroe makes a choked sound from the other bunk. Everyone studiously avoids looking at the covered bucket by the ladder that holds Harper's arm.

"Uh," Monty says, sounding strangled. "Harper is... Harper's kind of in limbo. She's unconscious now, we don't know if she'll make it yet."

Bellamy tunes out the rest of the conversation, closing his eyes and succumbing to the guilt.

With all the blankets over Harper, the rest of them huddle in their coats until the generator chugs along and warms the bunker so their breath no longer mists out in front of them.

"Who wants to explain first?" Clarke asks after a long silence.

All eyes turn to Bellamy. He swallows down the sudden lump in his throat.

"Raven and I weren't supposed to come down," he says.

"I know," Clarke says. "I don't get why that's important."

So he tells her everything, with the other delinquents occasionally chiming in to add details and opinions on the Ark. All the while the back of Bellamy's neck burns under the attention. Clarke's eyes are piercing.

There are other things Bellamy wants to tell her. He wants to tell her how it feels when she stirs in the middle of the night only to pull his arm over her waist and go back to sleep. He wants to tell her he doesn't know how he could have kept everyone alive this long without her, how much he admires her organization and the way she talks to the youngest delinquents and the way she was never even a little bit intimidated by him. He wants to tell her he wants to kiss her every morning from now until they die, and do it right this time, without running away, and he wants to apologize that he didn't figure it out until Raven pointed it out this morning. And most of all, he wants to say sorry. None of these conversations feel like they should happen in front of an audience in a very small bunker, with their friend on death's doorstep next to them.

So Bellamy only says, "I'm sorry."

Clarke is quiet for a long time.

Then she says, without meeting his eyes, "Wells and I barely remember the Ark, or anyone on it." She looks up and he's hit all over again by the blue of her gaze. Her lips twitch at the corners. "Frankly, Jaha Sr sounds like he deserved it."

Miller makes a startled wheezing sound and it takes Bellamy a split second to realize he's laughing. And then they're all laughing, half hysterical with the shock of it all.

In the center of the activity, Harper wakes. She mumbles around the gag in her mouth and yanks at the restraints holding her down. Everyone leaps up at once.

"I think she's speaking English," Monty points out, his relief obvious.

"How long would it take her to turn - to become like the others, if the infection spread?" Bellamy asks.

"No idea," Clarke says. Her hands flutter nervously by Harper's shoulders. Bellamy steps closer and Harper turns her head to look at him. Her eyes are wide and glazed with pain, her breathing uneven around the gag. But she recognizes him. She's pleading.

Clarke glances up at him one last time, and Bellamy nods. Everyone holds their breath as Clarke gently loosens Harper's gag.

"How are you feeling?" Clarke asks softly.

" - hurts everywhere," Harper croaks, with a tired smile.

"Do you feel the urge to bite anyone?" Miller asks, leaning over.

"Not more than usual," Harper says. But even that little conversation seems to have exhausted her. She smiles weakly at them once more and her eyes flutter shut again. Clarke presses two fingers underneath her jaw and counts heartbeats for a long moment.

"She's holding steady for now," Clarke says, to Bellamy's immeasurable relief. "But it'll be a long night. We should all try to get some sleep."

Bellamy stares at the bloodstained sheets under Harper, struggling for words. 

"The survivors from the Ark ship - " he says, and breaks off, a lump in his throat. Could they have warned them not to land at Mount Weather? If he hadn't thrown Raven's radio in the river, is there some way the delinquents could have walked the tightrope between what the Ark expected of them and what the Grounders wanted? Is that on his conscience now as well as his mother's death and the look of shock in Thelonious' eyes after he shot him? "There won't be any survivors in the morning," he says at last. 

Clarke closes her eyes. 

"No," she says quietly. "Not without a miracle."

It is indeed a very long and very restless night. In the morning, Raven radios them again with the world's shittiest divine intervention.

"Hey, uh," she says. "You guys remember a John Murphy?"

Clarke's face is blank and puzzled, as is Lincoln's. Miller and Monty both grimace.

"_That_ guy," Miller says.

"He was one of the delinquents," Bellamy says. "Went missing early on, before we knew how dangerous the woods are. We never found a body."

"Well he just showed up at our camp with a hot Grounder girlfriend in tow," Raven asks. In the background there is a quiet _thanks_. "And he's annoying the hell out of me. Are you coming back to deal with him any time soon?"

"He's still alive?" Monty asks in bewilderment.

"Alive and kicking, fuckers," a new voice says on the radio. "Looks like you've been busy while I was gone. Nice cabins."

"Where have you been?" Bellamy asks.

"Got captured by Grounders, dragged across a desert, robbed by my future girlfriend - "

" - Hi," the third voice says cheerfully.

" - locked in a lighthouse for three months, and finally wandered back."

"You crossed the dead zone twice?" Clarke asks, her eyebrows furrowed. "_Why_?"

"Because I found out how the world ended," Murphy drawls. "And I've come to spread the good news."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	5. and began again in the morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CONTENT WARNINGS:** some gore, some undead, needles and some medical attention. I would like to remind everyone that _'presumed dead'_ was one of the Bellarke prompts for this fic. This fic has a happy, albeit open-ended ending.

They remain in the bunker another day and a half to give Harper time to either turn into a monster or recover from the amputation enough to attempt the trek home.

A day and a half in the incredibly cramped bunker turns out to be enough time for Bellamy and Octavia to have two fights about her eye contact with Lincoln, for Miller to read every novel on the shelf, for Monty to get halfway through a magic trick guide and practice pulling coins out of Monroe's ear until she swats him and joins in on the Blake siblings' next fight, and for Clarke to threaten to kick them all out into the territory of the dead if they don't shut up and let Harper rest.

Raven radios in, keeping them updated on things in the camp. The updates start getting more sporadic and distracted the further she gets into the tablet John Murphy and his Grounder partner brought back. She starts explaining something about a cult, and expeditions sent to mine the far corners of the solar system, and a neurological interface, but nothing makes sense. Raven jumps from topic to topic in half-formed sentences that no one else follows, and her mood grows increasingly volatile. Bellamy doesn't think she sleeps at all, that second night, kept awake by the mysteries she's trying to piece together out of a long dead scientist's notes. Finally she only tells them to come home, sounding as though she's mentally lightyears away, and the radio goes quiet.

When the generator starts to sputter on the second afternoon, and Harper's done a few laps of the bunker and gotten only a little out of breath, they decide it's time to leave.

Bellamy looks over his shoulder at the horizon where the Ark ship fell, and something inside of him breaks at the sight of smoke rising above the trees. _I'm sorry we couldn't get to you_, he thinks, before turning his back and following the others away. 

The journey home, mercifully, is far less exciting than setting out was, but even so they're all exhausted when they get home and find John Murphy waiting for them. He's grown, it seems, in the few short months since his disappearance. He holds himself with more confidence. Bellamy winders if it's due to the outcast who came home with him or something he saw beyond the dropship camp's walls or the tablet he carried across a desert.

"What is it?" Clarke is the first to ask. Raven holds on to it tightly, and Murphy's eyes never leave it even though he lounges at the back of the dropship with every pretense of careful disinterest. Whatever it is, it's valuable, or they believe it is.

"Research notes from before the apocalypse," Raven says, her face shining. "Look. I am not a neurobiologist. Or even a biologist. I only eat the plants Monty tells me to."

"That's... not what biology is."

"The point is, Becca _was_. Sort of. She was kind of a genius, dabbled in everything. And before the world ended, she had plans, she made a serum. It was supposed to help deep-space travelers survive cosmic radiation, _and_ allow them to interface with surgically implanted memory chips. Very cool stuff."

"What does this have to do with the world ending?" Miller asks.

Raven waves a hand impatiently.

"Who cares? It was a hundred years ago."

"I care, actually,"

"That's not the relevant part, though. Clarke said that the people in Mount Weather turned into the flesh-eating monsters we now know and love because of exposure to surface radiation left over from the nukes."

"There were _nukes?"_

"That's not important," Raven stresses, throwing her hands up in the air.

"_How_ are nukes not important to mention?"

"I have a theory," Raven says loudly. "Becca's notes on the serum are _really_ detailed, and I think - fuck, okay, I need a sample. I need one of the dead to study, and I need a laboratory I could recreate Becca's work in."

"Well, the only place you might find a medical facility like that is Mount Weather," Monty says, with a concerned look towards Clarke. "...Right?"

Clarke looks more furious than Bellamy's ever seen her before. He thinks he might be the only one standing close enough to see how her chin is trembling.

"We have to try," Raven says. "I think I could make a vaccine. Imagine it, Clarke. No more new dead. Of course, the old ones would still be trying to bite us, but it wouldn't be a death sentence for anyone who doesn't get that limb chopped off as fast as possible. We wouldn't have to live like this anymore. You just have to lead us in."

"We'll never get close," she says at last.

"I trust you," Raven says.

Clarke closes her eyes and rocks back on her heels like she's been physically hit. And then, without saying another word, she turns and walks out of the dropship.

"I'll go," Bellamy says into the heavy silence that follows her departure. No one disagrees.

The outside air is a cold shock to his lungs. Bellamy walks slowly through the mixture of snow and mud that marks the busiest path through the center of the camp, wonders how long he should wait to give Clarke time to stew. He takes the long way around the residential cabins. He stops to smile at the lopsided snow men outside the biggest cabin where the youngest delinquents are rooming together, and steps out of the way of two girls running to the latrines in pajamas and squealing at the cold air. By the time he rounds the last corner, the chill has started to settle on him.

He stomps his feet on the medbay's doorstep, trying in vain to get rid of some of the slush that sticks to his soles, and walks in. The door to the back room is ajar, and through the gap he can see a warm orange flicker. Clarke looks up as he enters, and immediately turns her attention back to nursing the hearthfire that went dark in their absence back to life. Bellamy grabs more firewood before she can ask for it, and they work in silence to build a peak around the fledgling flame. Bellamy sits back on his heels, enjoying the heat on his face and hands.

"It's pathetic of me," Clarke begins, poking at the ashes with a loose twig, "But honestly, when I found out you guys were on your way to that Ark ship, I was so relieved."

Bellamy startles at that.

"That's what you meant, right?" Clarke asks warily. "The morning you left... after you kissed me. You said you shouldn't have done that."

He doesn't really remember exactly what he said, honestly. He remembers the guilt, remembers thinking she'd never forgive him for lying about Wells, and trying to memorize the calm before the storm. He tells her as much and she makes a soft huffing sound that might be a laugh and hides her face in her hands.

"You kissed me," she says, "And then I thought - I was going to tell you - I thought maybe you felt the same, and then you told me I was wrong."

"Clarke," he says urgently, tugging at her elbow. "_Clarke_."

"I spent that whole morning thinking you ran away from me," she says in a rush.

"No," Bellamy swears. "I mean, yes, but not the way you're thinking."

"You _asshole_."

"I'm sorry," Bellamy says. "I love you. I should have told you a lot of things, and that's one of them. I don't want any more secrets between us anymore."

"Then you should know that I love you too," Clarke says softly, lowering her hands from her face and tangling her fingers with his. It feels like coming home.

"I was getting that impression, yeah," Bellamy says with a half-smile.

"I think I would have done the same thing in your place," Clarke says. "Not telling me that you shot my best friend's dad - it's a smart political choice, I think. Not a _good_ one, but the smart one. I can't really blame you for it."

"You're taking this weirdly well," Bellamy says nervously. "How will Wells?"

"I'll vouch for you," Clarke says. She squeezes his hand. "You're not a killer, Bellamy."

He brings their joined hands up to his mouth and kisses her knuckles.

"Thank you," he says, barely loud enough to be heard.

"Can we deal with Raven's crazy serum idea tomorrow?" Clarke asks quietly. "Right now, I kind of just want to hold my husband."

That word makes them both smile sheepishly.

"All right," Bellamy says. "Tomorrow."

By now the hearthfire is merrily crackling away. The cabin has warmed enough that they strip down to their inner layers before crawling into the bed roll. The furs are cold against Bellamy's bare feet, but after a few minutes with Clarke curled against him, radiating warmth, Bellamy feels himself start to drift off. The last thing he feels is the soft press of Clarke's lips against his forehead.

In the morning Bellamy wakes to Clarke crawling back under the blankets and immediately sticking her cold hands on the heat of his stomach. He hisses and tries to shove her off, feeling the last tendrils of sleep reluctantly dissipate with the shock of her hands, but she only wriggles closer, hooking a knee over his thigh and pressing her equally cold nose into his jaw.

"Don't grumble," Clarke says, kissing his neck. "I got the fire going again."

Indeed, the hearthfire is new and young behind her. Kindling crackles loudly and vanishes up the chimney in bright embers as the flames begin to take to the pyramid of small logs. The cool air on Bellamy's face tells him it must have gone out at least an hour ago, and they slept through the dawn with the lingering warmth of their blankets.

"And you want some kind of reward, I bet?" Bellamy rasps to her. He grabs her hips and rolls them over before she can mount a defense.

He kisses her for what feels like a long time, but he doesn't think time is passing like it normally does. This feels like one of his mother's stories, a calm before the storm. Clarke's mouth feels natural against his, like they've been doing this through all the long weeks of their marriage, but every part of him is ablaze with the wonder of a newly discovered love.

Bellamy leans on the elbows braced on either side of her head and admires her carefully. Clarke's eyes narrow into suspicious cracks as a long moment goes by, and another. Bellamy idly sweeps a loose lock of hair off her forehead, then smooths down the hair fanned out across the pillow.

"What is this," Clarke says flatly.

"I'm looking at my wife," Bellamy says, his lips hovering just above hers. Clarke can't resist canting herself up just high enough to kiss him. Bellamy teases her for a moment and then draws just barely out of reach. "Am I not allowed to do that?"

"It was in the fine point of the treaty," Clarke says, adjusting her hips beneath him in what feels like a deliberate manner. "Thou will not look at your wife when you could be kissing her instead, you uncooperative pain in the ass."

"I already did," Bellamy says. To Clarke's affronted noise, he adds, "What, you want more kisses?"

They don't leave the warmth of their bed for a very long time.

Outside the air is crisp and the sun is out, albeit a cold and distant thing that glints painfully bright off the snow that's been piled around the cabins' foundations to make walking paths. There's no wind today to steal the warmth right off his skin, so as they walk to the mess hall Bellamy tilts his face up at the winter sun and lets the ghost of its heat grace his cheekbones. Clarke's hand is tucked against his elbow.

"I'm still afraid," Clarke admits, her voice quiet so the kids having a snowball fight up ahead of them won't hear. "But she's right, isn't she?"

"She usually is," Bellamy says. He wants to hear the rest of Raven's plan, at least.

They eat the last bit of porridge at the bottom of the communal pot and a freshly laid egg each. The grapevine stops by in the shape of Monty, who tells them that Raven's waiting in the dropship with Murphy and the Grounder he came with. His eyes linger on the bloom of red marks on Clarke's neck that clearly didn't come from any injury, but he doesn't say anything, which is an admirable show of restraint from one of the delinquents.

The dropship remains the central hub of the camp, even with most of their living space now expanded out to the cabins. Inside they store most of their perishable food, supplies that could last them another siege of the dead, and a few stray delinquents who are sleeping in cabins while the collapsed roof to their cabin is repaired.

The first thing Bellamy notices is a loose sheath of paper that flutters across the floor with the rush of air that follows them inside. There is a whole trail of scattered papers decorating the floor, all leading to Raven, all bearing charcoal scribbles written with such frantic energy that the diagrams have sometimes torn through the paper. It takes him a second longer to realize that when she ran out of paper, she continued her calculations on the dropship's walls.

The dark circles under Raven's eyes and the faint gleam of oil on her hair makes Bellamy worry that she didn't get any sleep last night. He feels a trickle of guilt for taking his time with Clarke this morning. They can't afford to be selfish like that.

"Raven?" Bellamy asks cautiously. Clarke reaches out to stroke her shoulder as Raven slumps with exhaustion. "You okay?"

"I thought I was smart," Raven mumbles.

"Raven, you're a _literal_ rocket scientist," Clarke says in disbelief. Raven shakes her off and points to the tablet in front of her.

"Becca was on a whole other level," Raven says dismissively. She doesn't even sound upset about it. She says it like she might say any other objective fact. "The tablet will run out of charge soon, but I copied down everything relevant. I think."

The others trickle in moments later, the grapevine having spread their location. Harper's absence makes breakfast sit heavily in Bellamy's stomach, but Monroe sees his dark look at the empty chair next to her and promises that Harper is resting in high spirits, all things considered.

"Damn, Raven," Miller says, slowly pivoting to take in the extent of her writing on the walls. "You're really leaning into the mad scientist vibe."

"Thanks," she says shortly, crossing her arms and glaring at them each in turn. "Anyway. I stand by what I said last night. I think I can create a vaccine."

"Could you also make a cure?" Monty asks. "Those two things are similar, right?"

"I don't think some of the dead would want to be brought back," Bellamy says. Remembering the smell of rot on the wind makes all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "I wouldn't want to, if I was halfway to decomposing."

"I don't know," Raven says. "I'm not a doctor. I fix _machines_. Not people."

"Raven, if we're talking about going back to Mount Weather - going _into_ Mount Weather, you need to be sure," Clarke says. "Because we won't all survive that trip."

Harper's absence is suffocating. They might not get lucky enough to bring back most of someone, next time.

"I'm mostly sure," Raven says. "I can't guarantee anything until I can analyze a sample of blood from one of the dead, and I sure as hell can't do that here. But Becca's notes - they make sense, there's - "

"Is no one going to bring up that we'd have to actually physically get Raven to Mount Weather?" Miller interrupts. He turns to her. "_You_ might understand those notes, but we sure don't. We can't go do the experiment for you, and you can't walk that far."

"Horses?" Raven asks weakly, looking towards Clarke.

"Maybe," she says. "But they spook easily. I was surprised how close they took us to the dead last time, honestly. They could get you most of the way, but they might panic and throw you off in the last stretch. And your spine is already fragile."

"But if I'm right..." Raven says meaningfully.

"Then we save everyone," Bellamy finishes.

"So we're going to Mount Weather," Monty says, his voice distant. Bellamy wonders if he's thinking of his best friend. The boy with the goggles who vanished on the first attempt to reach the bunker. Maybe this trip feels like absolution to more than one person.

"I guess we are," Clarke whispers.

Snow crunches underfoot. Behind him, other footsteps march in slightly different rhythms, along with the heavier _thud_ of hoofbeats. Raven's horse lets out an unhappy huff of air.

Their second - third - attempt to enter Mount Weather's aura of death is going slower than the previous one. This trek has been two days so far, but it feels like longer. There's more of them traveling, now, and more risk, but now they have Clarke and Lincoln's knowledge of the nearby bunkers. They zigzag between safe points, sending scouts on ahead to check if the coast is clear enough for Raven.

The morning Bellamy spent in bed with Clarke, letting the awe of her requited feelings wash over him, already feels like a lifetime ago.

"How much longer?" he asks Clarke quietly. She marches a half-step ahead of him, her cheeks rosy with cold, her lips as cracked and dry as his, her eyes fueled by the same desperate hope the rest of them have hitched on Raven's plan.

"Not long, I think," she says, scanning the trees ahead of them. "But it has been years since I came this close. And it was summer, then."

Bellamy nudges her elbow and smiles at her. Trying to get her to smile back. As the front of the group, they should be watching for threats. But Bellamy never sees the dead arrive.

One moment they are alone in the valley, the air still and cold and quiet around them. And then the dead are pouring out from the gnarled underbrush. Shouts from the back, the metallic scrape of swords being drawn. Someone calls for quiet as Raven's horse screams. Bellamy lunges for the reins instead of watching Clarke's back. Raven slips off the panicking horse, leaning heavily on him, and then she makes a choked noise, her gaze fixed on a point over his shoulder.

Clarke screams.

Bellamy turns back in time from the bloody clash around them to find Clarke kicking a body off the end of her sword. It crumples to the ground at her feet and Bellamy doesn't understand the tears on her face or the sound Raven is making, like she's being torn apart, until Clarke staggers and turns.

Her coat has been torn away at the shoulder, and the slope of her neck is raw and bloody. Beneath the fingers she has splayed to stop the bleeding, Bellamy can see the crescent moon curves of a bite mark.

"No," he says, feeling the horror of it crash down on him. The roar of his pulse in his ears drowns everything else out. Distantly, he can hear gurgling, can hear the slide of metal against flesh and cries of fear from the accompanying delinquents. The world falls away, because if Clarke has been bitten by the dead, there is no world.

She's whispering when he reaches her. Her knees give out and he lowers her into the snow, his hands hovering over the injury. There's a wide splatter of dark blood across her face, frost gathered at the edges of it. A droplet stains the corner of her mouth. He doesn't think it's hers.

"Bellamy," she says, and he realizes through his numbness that it's his name she's saying, over and over, like a prayer.

"Please," he begs her, even though they both know there's no amputating that. "Please don't, Clarke. I need you. You're a fighter - "

"Raven needs a sample," Clarke says. Her eyes are wide and frightened, the reflection of the pale white sky above making them look ghost-like. "She needs it - "

"Not you," Bellamy says. "I need you with me. Please, get up and fight - "

"I want to help," Clarke says, tearing up. "She needs one of the dead to study, please, Bellamy, I started this. Let me end it, let me end Wanheda's curse."

"It's not your fault," Bellamy says, only distantly aware of Miller stabbing a creature scarcely a meter away. "If you need forgiveness - I'll give that to you. You're forgiven. I love you, Clarke."

She smiles at that, a true smile, warm and delighted. The blood spot on her lip stretches with the motion. Bellamy leans down to kiss her.

"No," she says, pushing his mouth away. "Not you, Bellamy. You have to live."

"Without you?" he asks.

Unbidden, a memory comes to mind. Thelonious Jaha, his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes just the appropriate amount of compassionate as the guards who had once been Bellamy's peers unlocked the handcuffs around his wrists. _The world has ended many times_, Jaha says in his mind, _and began again in the morning_. The outer airlock doors have not even closed yet. Part of Bellamy thinks they could still toss out a lifeline and reel in his mother.

"I love you too," Clarke whispers.

Bellamy brushes her hair out of her face, leaving a bloody streak on her cheek. He bends down and presses his lips to her forehead and Clarke makes a sound that is half sob, half sigh of relief.

When he pulls back, her eyes close. Wanheda goes still.

The computers in Mount Weather turn on with surprisingly little fuss after having been abandoned for over a decade. Bellamy pays little attention as Raven gets to work. Her hands, gloved with sterile latex, shake around vials of dark blood. Her notes migrate out of their initial neat stack as she flips through them frantically, double-checking Becca's plans with her own data. One of them flutters onto Bellamy's boot. He looks down at it numbly. His brain registers phrases like _genome markers_ and _nanobots???_ before his attention slips sideways. Reality seems unusually fragile right now.

On the other side of a glass observation room, the body in the chair stirs, and his mouth goes dry.

He stands and walks to the window. So does Clarke. Her glossy eyes stare right through him from the other side, unseeing, uncaring. His breath fogs up the glass. Hers does not.

It's not just the raw blood vessels in the whites of her eyes that give her away. There's an emptiness, on top of all that. She looked right through him and saw nothing worth latching on to. Clarke has never looked at Bellamy like that before, like he wasn't valuable. Even at their first meeting, on the bridge, with a knife held to his sternum, she looked at him like he was the first worthy opponent she'd found in her life. And after - oh, the sonnets don't do justice to what came later. His mother's epics could barely hold a candle to the weight that lifted off his shoulders when Clarke brushed against him in the chaos of a crowded camp and whispered _you did good here._

But eventually, Bellamy lets down every single person he loves. That's his curse.

He looks at the shaking, unnerving figure behind the glass and bites down on his lip hard enough to taste blood. Blood, which started this mess to begin with. Movement at his side. The deep red of Raven's jacket shows up as purple under Mount Weather's harsh blue lighting. He says nothing as Raven gathers the courage to speak, the corners of her mouth turned down at the ends.

"We could..." she falters. "We could vent a paralytic into the room," Raven says with a shaking voice. It's one of the rare times he's seen her impeccable facade of confidence crack. "It would only take a few minutes. She wouldn't feel any pain."

"No," Bellamy says.

"Well you can't keep her locked in a laboratory forever," Murphy mutters from the far corner.

"Bellamy - " Raven insists, and breaks off, her face scrunching up with pain. He turns away so he doesn't see her fight back tears.

"You don't have to be here," Miller says. "Raven's idea is... gentle. Gentler than being floated, anyway. I'll pull the lever."

"Anything's gentler than being floated," Monty mutters.

"A few days ago," Bellamy says, his voice hoarse, "Monty asked if you could cure it. You didn't say no."

The room is quiet.

"I didn't say yes, either," Raven says. But she goes back to the centrifuge across the room and starts slotting test tubes into it with such force that Monty quietly warns her they might break. When the machine starts up with a loud _whirr_, the thing that used to be Clarke slams her fist against the window. _Testing the strength of the glass_, Bellamy thinks, and shudders.

"How will you know if the vaccine works, anyway?" Murphy asks several hours later, as Raven draws a pitch-black liquid into the chamber of a syringe. Her hands still. For the first time, she looks guilty.

"You know how," Raven says, her jaw set and defiant. "Why do you think I brought you along?"

In a flash, the other Grounder - Emori, Bellamy's learned her name is - leaps to her feet and draws her sword.

"No!" Bellamy yells. "No! Sit down. It's going to be me."

"You're valuable, you asshole," Raven snaps at him.

"And I'm not?" Murphy asks.

"You know it was always going to be," Bellamy pleads to Raven. "Ever since I tossed the radio into the river. Ever since Clarke was bitten. It was always going to be me."

Her eyes tear up.

"Don't make me kill a friend, Bellamy," she whispers.

"You won't," Bellamy says, rolling up his sleeve. "I trust you. You did good, Raven."

The injection stings, at first, and he spends the hour following it curled up underneath the lab table, gritting his teeth as it burns through his limbs. It feels like a long time before his body belongs to him again. By then, Raven says the first batch of a potential cure is ready to test.

Bellamy takes the syringe into the observation room with him. The thing that used to be Clarke turns to face him warily, snarling slightly. The way she looks at him, the way she crouches - it's like he's an enemy to her, part predator and part prey. It hurts, but maybe it's not entirely inaccurate.

They'll leave this room together, or not at all. It's almost poetic.

"Hey there, Clarke," he says. His breath mists in the cold air. They didn't waste time and energy coaxing Mount Weather's generators into providing heat, not when its absence would preserve Clarke's body longer, buy Raven time to build a miracle from century-old scripture. She bares her teeth at him. He swallows. "It's me," he says. Futile. She doesn't recognize him. "It's Bellamy. You love me."

She circles warily around the chair as he approaches. Maybe they should have strapped her body in, but it's too late now.

"Come closer," Bellamy coaxes. His heartbeat feels wildly out of sync, pounding in his chest like fists against a door, like it did when he first saw her, when he first kissed her, when she told him she loved him. He feels lightheaded with it all, and hopes it's not the vaccine. He can see the others standing at the observation window, waiting to see what happens, but he doesn't look at them. He hopes Raven can't tell he's afraid. He doesn't want her to think it's doubt in her abilities.

The thing that used to be Clarke edges closer.

"That's it," Bellamy says, discreetly adjusting his grip on the syringe. If she tears him apart, he half-hopes the injection doesn't work so she doesn't have to know. His voice is barely above a whisper. "Come closer, beautiful."

He forces a smile, and she leaps.

He didn't actually have a plan for this part. His arm raises up on instinct, and her teeth sink into the meaty part of his forearm. The sharp sting and the sudden sensation of rivulets of warm blood running down to his elbow makes him yelp, but he doesn't tear his arm out of her mouth. They visited a village with puppies in the autumn, before the chill set in. They were teething. When they clamped onto Bellamy's ankles Clarke told him not to fight it, that he wouldn't be damaged unless he tried to tear out of their jaws. He groans through the pain and lets her clamp on, lets the taste of his blood distract her as he raises the syringe to her neck and plunges the full vial of black fluid in.

Moments later, Clarke's eyelids flutter. She looks a little confused and relaxes her bite on his arm. They've both been dosed now with poison and antidote. It is time to see if Raven's theory proved true.

Clarke stumbles and sways, and they collapse together in a tangle of limbs, the syringe rolling away on the floor to parts unknown. Bellamy draws her closer, pressing his cheek to her golden hair, and watches the delicate spiderweb of blood just beneath his skin.

"You're in my veins now," he whispers. She doesn't answer, but he kisses her clammy forehead anyway and waits to see what fate deems them worthy of. He is very tired, suddenly. He has been fighting a long time, and he just wants to rest with his wife in his arms. He slumps against the wall behind him and lets out a deep exhale before drifting off.

Voices. His head pounds. A monotonous beeping. His fingertips twitch against the sensation of linen. A hand closes around his wrist, and he opens his eyes.

"Hi, Bellamy," Clarke says, her eyes blue and sparkling. Someone washed the blood off her face, a kindness. The circles under her eyes are still deep and gray, but as he watches her shoulders raise and fall ever so slightly as she breathes.

"You're alive," he says, struck dumb by the sight of her. "Or we're both dreaming."

"We're alive," she whispers. "You saved me."

"_I_ saved you, assholes," Raven says, and Clarke lifts her arm up invitingly with a laugh. Raven tucks herself next to her with what looks like a painfully tight squeeze, and then everyone's crowding in - Monty, Monroe, Emori, Murphy, hell Miller even looks happy. If anyone starts crying, there's a tacit agreement not to mention it.

They eat a meal of dried rations as the centrifuge rumbles on in the background, preparing more doses. Between mouthfuls Monty explains that he found some kind of old defense mechanism that releases a cloud of neutralizing poison around the bunker, and he and Raven speculate how to transform the cure into gaseous form to dose the hoards of dead that hang around Mount Weather, whether they like it or not.

And the cold vice grip of fear that has held Bellamy for so long that he forgot what life felt like before it finally eases. 

They take the long way home. It's been days now, since the ship from the Ark landed, and Bellamy knows it's unlikely there will be anyone left, but they need that closure.

It's still a shock when they cross the next rocky peak and there it is in the valley below them like a metallic smear, a trail of debris half a kilometer long smoking faintly in the snow beyond them. Miller turns away from the sight with a pained hiss and Bellamy wishes he had those reflexes. 

"Oh," he says, feeling all the air leave him. "They never - "

"Dead when they hit the ground," Raven murmurs. No one would survive that landing. Not in any condition the delinquents could have helped them in. It's strange, then, to feel half-absolved. Around him, everyone is muted, afraid to look at the crash site and yet afraid to look away. "I wanna check the black box," Raven says. "See if there's any info, or parts. The bridge looks like it might be sort of intact."

So they go onwards, weapons at the ready as they pick a way through the debris for something salvageable, but there are no dead. Not the kind that walk in their nightmares, anyway. When they step into the shadow of the half-collapsed dome of the ship, Bellamy has the urge to run. Only Clarke's hand in his keeps him rooted. He looks at her, tracing the healing bruises around her face, reminding himself that she's still here. They enter together. 

Monty's the one who finds the captain's radio. The handheld receiver dangles off the hook. For a moment, no one touches it, perhaps afraid there will be someone on the other end, perhaps afraid there won't be. Clarke makes the call. 

"Hello?" she asks into it. "Is anyone listening?"

Silence.

"It was worth a shot," Monty says with a sigh. 

"I might be able to scavenge enough materials from here," Raven says, though Bellamy hears her thinly hidden disappointment. 

"All right," Miller says, clapping Bellamy heavily on the shoulder. "We've had enough adventure. Let's go home."

Clarke sets the radio down and hangs her head with a heavy exhale. Bellamy kneels next to her and rubs her shoulders, wondering what to say, wondering if he should say something. They've told her stories of the Ark, the good and the bad, everything that made them yearn for the sky again and everything that made them curse that stupid metal box that orbited far above them. But there are so many missing pieces. The life she might have had up there with them, the mother she doesn't remember, the questions she still has about why her father fell to the Earth. It must hurt, Bellamy thinks, to know she'll never get those answers now. 

"I'm okay," she says, reaching out and squeezing his hand. "It's fine."

"You're allowed to be disappointed," Bellamy says, but whatever he was about to say next is interrupted by static.

" - someone spoke."

They all freeze at the crackle that comes from the radio - a cut-off sentence, nearly intelligible. 

"Hello?" a woman's voice asks. In the background, muffled, a second person suggests she's hearing things. "Is someone there?"

For a moment no one moves. They stare at the receiver with shock and disbelief until Clarke laughs. Her smile is wide and bright enough to light up a night sky as she raises it up to her mouth.

"This is Clarke Griffin," she says breathlessly. "Calling from Earth. You can hear us?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line Jaha says to Bellamy in his memory is modified from one of my favourite poems: “i don't pay attention to the / world ending. / it has ended for me / many times / and began again in the morning.” - Nayyirah Waheed, Salt. You may recognize it from the chapter titles.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and once more to @marauders-groupie and @craniumhurricane for the prompts. :) 
> 
> The BFWA are apparently on! Fanfic is a lengthy and emotional labour of love. Please consider supporting your favourite fanworks this year, and if that includes any of mine, know that I'm out there, somewhere, blushing into a pillow. Thanks for making this fandom what it is. Let's give this last year our all.


End file.
